1989
by The Buzz
Summary: When Scully goes to sleep in 2000 and wakes up in 1989, she goes to the only person who might be able to help. But 27-year-old Mulder has a new case and some problems of his own.
1. Chapter 1

Scully awoke to the harsh beepbeepbeep of her clock-radio. She slapped the snooze button with her eyes closed and settled back into her bed, pulling her covers around her. Last night. Of course. Three autopsies for Mulder that had turned up nothing interesting. Then they'd gone out for a late dinner. Italian, pasta primavera. Delicious. And then the call had come in that another body'd turned up, which had broken up their evening and wasted another three hours of her life. She hadn't gotten home until almost two in the morning.

Her alarm beepbeeped again and jerked her alert. Time to face the harsh reality. It was morning, and she had to get up, god damn it. She propped herself up on an elbow and after a little searching pressed the button that turned her alarm off. Then she reached for the lamp on her bedside table, a practiced, everyday motion, and grabbed air.

What?

Where the hell was her lamp? Had it fallen in the middle of the night? She sat up and swung her legs out of her warm bed, and squinted at her bedside table through the darkness. Then she felt the tabletop and touched nothing but smooth polished wood and the blocky, almost unfamiliar shape of her alarm clock.

Curious and slightly annoyed, she padded across the carpet and flicked the light switch on her wall. In the sudden brightness, she blinked, and gaped.

Everything was wrong. Her walls were blue, the furniture was different, her bookcase was in the wrong place, and the carpet was not where it had been last night—or even the same carpet. This one she'd bought at a discount at Sears right after moving into her apartment, more than ten years ago. In fact…her whole room had regressed a decade.

Knickknacks that had long since disappeared adorned her dresser, and she walked over to it. There was a flower-filled vase from Melissa, a gift received at some mid-twenties birthday, an embroidered jewelry box she'd bought during a trip to the Bahamas in '87 or '88, and a framed photo of a pretty spot in the woods she'd found hiking with friends. Back when she had friends. Greeting cards, opened slightly so that they stood upright, lined the top of her bookcase. Dazed, she crossed the room, picked up a card, and opened it. A picture of lilies. Happy twenty-fifth, Starbuck. Love Mom and Dad. The next one, a Far Side comic about birthdays. Inside, a half-funny punch line, and Happy Birthday Dana. Hope you're having a great day. Love, Bill. A p.s. inquired about her FBI training, and she remembered how much it had annoyed her that Bill, who disapproved of her career so blatantly, had had the nerve to ask her about it in a birthday card like he was only curious.

She glanced at the other cards. All from family and friends, and all from her twenty-fifth birthday. Then she stumbled back to the bed and sat down hard. Stared at the furniture, ten years too old and yet unworn. She was numb.

So. She forced herself to breathe deeply, to reason this out like she would any X-file. Her room was exactly as it had been not ten, but eleven years ago, down to the very birthday cards she'd received in 1989.

There was no way anyone could have done this while she was sleeping. Not counting the noise and effort required to rearrange everything, half the objects that now cluttered her shelves had been lost or broken or packed away long ago. She'd sold the embroidered jewelry box to an old man at a garage sale less than a year after meeting Mulder. She'd moved the vase from Melissa to her kitchen counter and it had shattered just a few months later.

She pressed her hands to her face. If this wasn't a human act… what was it? An act of God? Time travel? It couldn't be. It was impossible to wake up in a different year. It was March 2nd, 2000, end of story.

If only seven years of X-files hadn't taught her that sometimes, the impossible was the only explanation.

She needed to do something. She needed to get up and figure out what the hell was going on. She could check the TV or the radio. She could explore the rest of the apartment to be sure that everything was as it had been. Then she could decide on a plan of action. She stepped out into the hall. A calendar filled with "nuns having fun" said it was March 1989. She walked past several pictures of family and friends. Then an old mirror caught her eye and she stopped. And stared.

Her face was round and soft and smooth, no fine tired lines around her mouth and eyes. Her hair was brownish and voluminous and bangs covered her forehead. No sleek FBI haircut, and no bright red gray-masking dye. Her body was more lithe, more solid, even in the ugly flannel pajamas she was wearing. She ran her hands lightly over her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, and her absurdly twenty-five-year-old face.

Another wave of disbelief shot through her, and she backed up against the wall and leaned—collapsed—against it. She was twenty-five years old, living in the apartment that had been newly hers eleven years ago. Agent Scully, age twenty-five. No, not Agent. Trainee. Trainee Scully.

She took a deep, shaky breath, and stood up. Now that she was aware of her young body, she couldn't help but feel the difference. She was looser and lither and strong. It was hard to believe this had really been her.

The day squares on the calendar were carefully crossed off, something she hadn't had the time or energy to do for years. According to the calendar, it was March 2, 1989. She fought down the panic that seemed to be trying to claw its way out of her twenty-five-year-old throat. There had to be something she could do. Some explanation for this.

She needed to talk to Mulder. Habit made her glance at the clock on the wall, only it was the old clock that had lost its will to live shortly after, what? The van Blundht case, several years from now. God. It was 6:20. Mulder would probably be up, if not already in the office.

Except the basement office was where they kept the copiers, and twenty-seven-year-old Mulder didn't know or care one bit about Dana Scully. She heard her alarm start beeping again as the snooze function ran out of time.

And yet, she thought, with a strange detachment, as her too-young body staggered back to the chair at the kitchen table, if there was anyone who could help her it would be Mulder. He had to still—still?—believe in the paranormal. That kind of thing didn't, couldn't happen overnight. And he was brilliant and helpful and kind. Wasn't he?

Scully tried to remember everything about Mulder's past with the Bureau, but realized that aside from a few odd dates and names she knew next to nothing about it. He'd worked in Violent Crimes with Reggie Purdue, then the Behavioral Science Unit with Bill Patterson and that guy Jerry LaMana who died in an elevator. Mulder had solved the Monty Propps case with his profile, she knew that, had caught Roche and Boggs and dozens of others. He'd started on the X-files with Diana in 1991.

Scully felt a twist of unease. In 1989 Mulder was still the fair-haired boy wonder of the BSU, Patterson's crack profiler. Patterson, who had watched Mulder lose himself in Mostow's darkness and encouraged it. Told her not to get in his way or hold him back because she wouldn't be able to. She remembered wondering what kind of a life Mulder could've led back then if Patterson saw that darkness as being all in a day's work. What a different person he must have been.

A sob rose in up her so unexpectedly that she could do nothing but let it out. She might never see Mulder again. Not the young Mulder, who was called Spooky because he solved cases and not because he chased aliens, but the man she loved. Her friend and partner and so much more for nearly seven years. It was as if her Mulder was dead, but worse, because there was no way to mourn the living.

She rode out the next sob pressing at the back of her throat until it deflated. Today she would find Mulder, and explain what had happened. Maybe he was the same Mulder that had smiled at her so tenderly last night. Maybe he would help. Maybe not. What else could she do?

* * *

><p>The main entrance to the J. Edgar Hoover Building was quiet at 7:30 AM. Scully knew that within an hour it would be bustling with tourists, families on vacation and herds of uninterested school children. She didn't recognize most of the security guards. She handed over her keys and passed through the metal detector, marveling, for a moment, that she hadn't set it off because there wouldn't be a chip in her neck for another six years. If ever.<p>

The realization hit her so suddenly that in her old chunky heels she nearly staggered into the security guard. She gave the man a vague nod of apology and stumbled away to wonder why she hadn't thought this through before. She might _never_ set off a metal detector. She might never get her life back. On the way here she'd been preoccupied with what to say to Mulder to make him hear her out that she'd hardly considered what might come next. And what could possibly come next? She felt as if something had just been kicked out from under her, from inside of her. She couldn't believe this. _I refuse to believe that, Mulder. _How many times had she said that to him? Or he to her? For all of their obsession with the truth they were experts at denial, and now she wanted to crawl back into the comforting hole of not worrying about how she could possibly return her life to normal.

Because the truth was that unless she could magically will herself back to the new millennium, she would never resume the life she'd had. There was no way that she make the same decisions, set off the same events, even if she tried. She was a different person now than she had been eleven years ago. Today. There were simply too many details, too many things she simply couldn't remember.

And beyond that, she didn't want to relive it all. It had been easy to say flippantly to Mulder that she wouldn't change a thing, that it had all been worth it (well, all but Flukeman) but now, faced with the prospect of actually reliving the last eleven years, the idea was impossible to stomach. There had been too much pain and hardship and uncertainty. She couldn't live through Melissa's death again, through years of fearing for Mulder and her mother, through losing Emily or her abduction or her cancer. No way she could knowingly cause so many people pain just to take the long road home. She'd been wrong. It wasn't worth it.

She felt the urge to cry again and forced it down, breathing deeply and letting her eyes shut for a moment. If there was ever a time for denial, it was now. She had to take this one step at a time, and the next step was finding Mulder. Even if he couldn't help her, he could advise her. He could be wise. He could be comforting. He could make everything better.

Because Mulder _always_ makes things better. She found herself shaking her head. Because Mulder never exacerbates the situation, never fumbles his best intentions, never alienates her or makes her hurt or sad. Still, she could think of exactly one person in the entire world who might be able to help her, and that was where she was going to start.

She went directly to the BSU offices. The thoughts churning through her mind eventually faded to the background as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. Everything here looked _almost_ the same. The computers were older, the phones were bigger, and she recognized areas that had been refurbished in the last eleven years, but the halls of offices and carpet and the bustle of the bullpen were essentially the same. She tried to exude an air of confident belonging, and set her features in their best authoritative but directionless gaze. She was all too aware of the fact that her young soft face was far more suited to, at best, mild petulance. She hadn't really learned to glare, to get what she wanted through pure silent ire, until after Mulder.

The plaque on the first door in the hallway read "William Patterson." She felt something collapse with relief inside her despite her misgivings. She was close. She moved along the hallway past doors marked with names she didn't recognize, heart pounding, until she reached a door with nameplates that read "Jerald LaMana" and, just below, "Fox Mulder."

Before she could knock, the door swung violently inward and she was face-to-face with Mulder. She stared. A moment passed and he stepped back slightly, looking at her. She knew she had to speak but oh, God, this was unreal. This wasn't Mulder. Not _her_ Mulder.

The man who stood before her was gaunt and tired and young. His face was unlined but pale and contoured by the hollows in his cheeks and the dark crescents beneath his eyes. His cheekbones were angular and too prominent, and his nose jutted. His lower jaw was darkened by stubble, and as he turned to face her she could see a healing bruise mottling the skin just below his left eye. His long dark trench coat, hanging open, enveloped his frame but failed to hide the pinched, bony thinness of his limbs. He carried himself with little of the graceful swagger she was accustomed to. It was swallowed instead by the deliberate movements of an exhausted man. His habitual smirk was absent too, replaced by a pained, dour expression that clenched his jaw and deadened his eyes. In that moment he looked at her with no sympathy, no recognition and no interest.

Scully could remember a dozen cases in which Mulder had driven himself to the edge, past the edge, with no one watching out for him but her. Facing the darkness without her, he appeared to be destroying himself. Running on empty when he shouldn't be running at all, pushing too hard and far past the point of reason. Patterson undoubtedly too busy staying out of his way, the bastard, to make sure that Mulder didn't lose it. Her heart went out to him and at the same time wanted with an instinctual fear to pull away because this Mulder was a stranger lost in his darkest, most frightening hell. And yet she'd always wanted to shield him from pain, even when her own had seemed too much to bear. Even now she wanted to wrap herself around him, hold him and let him break down in her arms.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

His voice was different yet the same, low and threatening and angry at this intrusion. He stared down at her with dark eyes. Scully was almost too stunned to respond.

"I—yes," she said. "I mean no." Bit her lip as she tried to marshal her thoughts. To remember the man this gaunt figure would become. "I'd like to speak with you." She hesitated, thinking of the plan she'd conceived in the car on her way to the Bureau. It might hurt him, but she had to make him listen to her. She closed her eyes for a moment. Opened them and said in a flat voice, disgusted with herself before she even began, "I need to talk to you. I can tell you about your sister."

Some of the harshness in his taut face dissolved for a moment, as he looked at her in disbelief. "What?" he asked. Then all of the hard lines and pain returned, and he stood taller, towering over her. His voice was demanding and backed by a pulsing anger that both frightened and saddened her. "Who the hell are you? What do you know?"

"My name is Dana Scully. I'm a trainee at Quantico." She was sweating, and felt a cold bead drip down her back under the ugly blouse she wore. She had his attention all right. "Mulder, I need your help."

She could feel his eyes sweeping up and down her body as he processed her, the information she promised, the use of his name. After a long moment broken only by his deep shaky inhale he nodded back into his office and pushed the door open wide. "Come in," he said roughly.

Scully complied, and thought about how best to admit she could only tell him so much about Samantha, because she was afraid to, afraid of what would happen if this Mulder knew as much as she did. It was just too risky. But would her reticence devastate him? Or enrage him? She realized as he shut the door behind her just how little she knew this old Mulder, and how much that scared her. A wordless thought in the back of her mind was that this was already a bad idea.

Mulder went to lean against a desk, one of two in the room, and stared at her mistrustfully. Trust no one. Right. His eyes were big in his bony, determined face. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak, but interrupted her as soon as she opened her mouth. "What do you know about Samantha? Who are you? Who sent you?"

"Mulder," Scully said, trying to pacify him.

"How do you know me?" He wore the expression of the angry interrogator, the one that usually appeared right before he punched an unwitting prisoner in the face. But she was no Roche, no Krycek. Couldn't be.

Scully hated herself for just a moment, for toying with his emotions, for knowing how to manipulate him to get her way. It hadn't seemed like a bad plan earlier. If she didn't mention his sister—the one thing she knew that even his past self cared about—he might ignore her, disregard her. Does that make it right? Of course not, she answered herself. But there would be time for guilt later. Mulder would understand eventually. She fought down another wave of self-directed revulsion. "What I'm going to say next will probably disturb you," she said. "I know a great deal about you and I need to prove that to you before I go on. I'm just asking you to hear me out."

Mulder didn't move.

Scully took a deep breath and began. "Your sister Samantha was abducted when you were twelve years old and she was eight. The event devastated you and fractured your family. When you were young, younger, you used to close your eyes before you went into a room and hope that she would be there, returned to you." Scully, paused, trying to gauge Mulder's reaction, but his face was frozen. She swallowed went on. "You used to want a peg leg, or at least that's what you tell people. When you attended Oxford you had a relationship with a girl named Phoebe Green, and the two of you had some joke about a…a three pipe problem. You like seeds, sunflower seeds, because your father liked them. You used to listen to him crunching them at night to reassure yourself that you weren't—"

Something reached a boiling point behind Mulder's eyes and he slammed his hand on the desk hard enough to hurt and yelled, "Shut up!" He was rigid with emotion and he snarled his next words. "Stop. Just stop. Either tell me what you're playing at or leave me the hell alone, but _stop_. I don't know you, Dana Scully, and but I know I sure as hell don't have the time for mind games."

He sounded angry and distraught. But beneath the fury was a profound weariness, and in another irrational moment Scully wanted nothing more than to pull him to her, to offer the comfort of a hug, to stroke his hair and kiss his lips and touch his skin until he was whole again.

"I'm sorry," she said, and noticed that her own voice was wavering, throaty with regret. "Mulder, I'm sorry. I needed to know that you would believe me. I… I mean, don't you, don't you want to know how I know so much?"

Mulder closed his eyes and massaged his forehead for a moment, a movement so familiar that Scully could almost forget this wasn't the man who gave her flowers for her birthday last month, who stopped at Starbucks every morning before work to buy her a latte. "Yes," he said finally, opening his eyes. He was no longer yelling. "I do. Of course I do."

Scully swallowed nervously, aware of how ridiculous her admission would sound. What if he didn't believe her? What if he told her to just get out? Just go for it, G-Woman. This was Mulder, believer extraordinaire _but_ _this wasn't her Mulder_.

She bit her lip, took a deep breath and released it, and then spoke. "In a few years, Mulder, you will leave the BSU for a project called the X-files. I will be assigned to you as your partner. We'll work together for almost seven years, solving cases like, like this one. We'll be… friends. When I went to bed last night, it was the year 2000, and when I woke up I was here. Today. Eleven years younger than I was last night. Mulder, I don't know what to do. I don't know who else to go to. You have always been such a believer," Scully blinked back tears, "and so I hope you can believe me now. I realize that this doesn't make sense right now, but…"

Mulder was shaking his head and laughing silently.

"…but it's real, Mulder," she finished. "And we can come to understand this."

His eyes met hers and his expression—lips a thin line, one side of his face curled into an near-smile, eyes wide and disbelieving—was almost amused.

"You expect me to believe this bullshit?" he asked. "Listen, Dana Scully, if I had all day I might wait around for you to abandon the science fiction and make a point, but I don't. So either tell me the truth or get the hell out of my office and don't bother me again. I have to go."

The phone on Mulder's desk rang suddenly, and he pounced on it and practically spat his greeting. "Mulder." He listened for a moment, jaw grinding. Then, "Yes, yes, I know. … Of course not. Tell them to wait. … Tell them they're going to have to wait. Shit, Jerry, it's not like he's going anywhere. Yes. I'll be there in a few minutes." He slammed the phone down on the hook and turned his attention back to Scully. "I have to go," he said again, pulling away from the desk and heading toward the door. "So do you."

For a few seconds Scully was too stunned to do anything but state at Mulder—not her Mulder—in disbelief. Mention of his sister, secrets he hadn't shared with anyone in years, if ever, had failed to interest him. Where was that burning desire to seek the ever-elusive Truth? Her Mulder would have been fascinated by a story like hers. She could practically hear his theories in her head—time travel! A psychic! Dream sharing or past lives or déjà vu!

"Get out," Mulder said again. He was holding the door open for her, and had a briefcase in one hand.

"Wait," she said, breathless as if she'd run miles to find him. "At least let me come with you. I can help you, Mulder."

Another humorless smile twisted his face. "Don't make me call security."

Scully clenched her teeth. Think, Dana, think. You know him better than anyone. You should be able to make him believe.

"What case are you working on?" she asked.

"Go home."

"If it's a high-profile case, I might remember it. I might be able to help you."

They stood in the hallway, staring at each other. Scully couldn't read his expression. She remembered, achingly, another hallway conversation, in another building, another lifetime. This one seemed much less likely to end in anything sweet.

Mulder broke eye contact to glance at his watch, and started to stride down the hall. Scully was forced to jog to catch up with him. She looked up at him and found herself repeating a question that he had asked her, seven years ago, to which she had replied with a sigh. "Mulder, aren't you even curious?"

And Mulder snapped. "Am I curious?" he snarled and pivoted so that they were face to face. "Of course I'm curious. Of course I'm fucking _curious_! I want to know what happened to Samantha, and I want to know how the hell you know about her and me and I would love to have a chat about the intricacies of time travel some time but I can't Dana. I don't have the time and I can't make the time. Every minute I waste here talking to you is one that the son of a bitch I'm trying to catch can stalk and rape and murder more children and I can't let that happen. But you should know that already shouldn't you? Don't you? Well right now unless you are the killer you are not my concern. So no Dana, I am not curious right now because I don't have the time to be curious. Take your stories to someone else."

* * *

><p>Note: I wrote the first 40,000 words of this story about five years ago and recently rediscovered it on my computer. I'm currently in the process of editing what I have, and will post new chapters as I do. Then I'll be picking up where I left off.<p>

Reviews are very appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

Warning: This chapter involves some discussion of case-related violence and sexual violence against children.

* * *

><p>Mulder shouldered his way past half a dozen agents who'd deserted the bullpen to watch the show. He could feel tears prickling his eyes and he blinked them back, but he was so tired, he couldn't care and he couldn't stop them. That woman had had to bring up Samantha. Whoever the hell she was. He wanted to turn back and ask, to find out everything he could about his sister and Dana Scully's crazy story but he was just too tired, and he didn't have the time. He thought he could barely remember the last time he'd slept the night through but of course he could remember—his eidetic memory recorded everything but what really mattered, the night Samantha had been kidnapped and he'd been useless to her groveling on the floor with a gun in his hands. He wanted to crumble away and forget. Only he couldn't, because he owed it to her to remember the day he lost her. Had she died? Escaped? Was she still locked in a basement somewhere sixteen years later, tortured and starving and remembering her last moments at home when he told her to get out of his life?<p>

He couldn't imagine how Dana Scully had known so much, or why she'd taunted him with information about his sister but talked instead about his past and his future in riddles that he could neither entirely understand nor ignore. He couldn't deal with this. He had a profile to fix and a suspect to interview and he couldn't do that if he was thinking about Samantha. Goddamn her. Goddamn Dana Scully.

He stormed out of the building and shivered in the cold barely-March air of the parking garage. Patterson had requisitioned him a car for the duration of the case even though they were in D.C., because he didn't want to wait the extra five minutes it would take for Mulder to get one each time he needed one. Not that Bill had used so many words, just handed Mulder the keys and told him to solve the case before the FBI wanted the car back. That had been a week ago, right after the second victim was found. Mulder had just flown in from Nevada, from another case, a successful five-and-a-half day profile, running on three hours of sleep and half a bottle of Tylenol. And he'd been glad, disgustingly glad, that the new kiddie murder case was in D.C. rather than halfway across the country again. He'd been relieved to hear that children, _children_, were being raped and murdered in D.C. because he had a headache and he wasn't in the mood to travel anymore.

He deserved this. He deserved all of the pain and the guilt and that Scully woman and even the new headache squeezing his skull right now, which had started an hour ago when in light of a missed piece of evidence—the victim's prints on a door handle—his first profile had become obsolete and Patterson had called to tell him in a calm-as-fucking-hell voice that he was disappointed and how in the name of God could Mulder have missed that at the crime scene? And of course, Patterson was right.

Mulder had started the car almost without realizing that he'd reached it or unlocked it or got in. The vents began to blow cold dusty air in his face and he coughed and turned the fan down. Then for a moment he just sat, his head bowed, digging the tips of his fingers into his temples in hopes of willing away the pain and the memories and this whole goddamn morning.

Yeah, right.

Backing out of the parking space, he tried to both understand Dana Scully's story and disregard it because he had other, more important things to think about. Patterson was always reminding him that profiling was not a nine-to-five job. And by extension, any time spent on living his life was wasted, a waste of his talent and a waste of the victims' lives. Thinking about himself, about Samantha, about that woman and her story was a luxury that he could not afford, because this week if he wasn't looking at their art he was letting those goddamned artists get away with brutalizing five- to twelve-year old boys and girls. _Like Samantha_. At least the Nevada case had been adults. One more goddamn thing to be grateful for.

His head throbbed harder in the light from the cold wintry sunshine. He swore and gripped the steering wheel with both hands until they were bloodless and started to ache.

The station wasn't far away, but he was already twenty-five minutes late and frustrated when he pulled into the crowded lot. Of course since he was already late half of D.C. had forgotten how to drive, let alone how to use a turn signal or go more than twenty miles per hour. He recognized his partner's car. Of course, Jerry would be covering his ass in the station—Jerry's real assignment, as far as Patterson was concerned—but the cops would give Mulder a hard time no matter what that bumblefuck said. They never liked him _and maybe it's because you come late and snap at them for doing their own damn jobs_.

He pulled into a spot, put the car in park and quickly pulled the parking brake up. Then he kept straining at it with the momentary irrational wish that he could just tear it out of the motherfucking car and crash it through the window and keep shoving his arm through so that the glass shards ripped through it, tearing skin and flesh and muscle and shattering across the asphalt and he could scream like a child and let all of his anger out in the pain and the force and the noise.

The fantasy was gone in a second and he let go of the parking brake. He didn't feel any better and it was only getting later.

He hurried up to the entrance and tried to collect himself. He started thinking about Dana Scully instead. Shit. He had to focus, which would be hard enough already with this headache and knowing he was only here because he'd made a stupid mistake. Scully must have known something about Samantha. Why else would she have mentioned her? Maybe the rest of her story _was_ important, somehow, and by blowing her off Mulder had just lost Samantha again, too busy with his work to save his only sister. To even try. But he couldn't go back now. Too many people were waiting on him and Dana Scully was probably gone by now, like he'd told her to be. Because he was running late and he was _tired_. He was a selfish bastard.

He navigated his way by clusters of people and through hallways until he spotted Lamana standing uncomfortably by a cell beside two uniformed police. Jerry nodded to Mulder and then continued with whatever conversation he was having with one of the officers, a pale woman with a big frame who, in her largeness, made Mulder strangely aware of the twenty pounds he'd shed since joining Patterson's team. This woman would probably win in a fair fight, though he'd never been good at fighting anyway. Flashing his badge, Mulder joined the group and tried not to let his pounding headache show under the harsh florescent lights. Hell if they'd see anything but his cold, blank, game face.

The second officer, a black man with glasses and bulging biceps, looked at Mulder distastefully. "You know," he said by way of greeting, glancing at his watch, "It's almost eight thirty."

Mulder offered a fuck-you glare but didn't reply to the asshole. Something reminded him inexplicably of Dana Scully and he felt his jaw clench. He had to stop thinking about that, about Samantha… shit, he'd probably have better luck playing Russian Roulette with his weapon fully loaded.

Jerry grinned at him, and it was part fake, part thank God you're here and I don't have to cover your ass anymore. He clapped Mulder on the shoulder, and Mulder tensed as a new surge of annoyance rushed through him. What the hell was Jerry doing, acting all buddy-buddy? Trying to impress the cops? Jerry let his hand swing back to his side. "Hey, man, where were you? How did the meeting with Patterson go?"

Mulder stared at him blankly. He felt like grabbing the little idiot and slamming him into the wall. "What meeting with Patterson?"

"Oh, maybe he wanted to meet after you talked to Carrey. That was it. Well, anyway, Lieutenant Dibbs here says that—well, she can say it."

The blonde Amazon woman appraised him coolly before speaking. "Agent Mulder, we've had the suspect prepped and the guards at the room since eight. Are you ready to begin?"

Fuck no, my head hurts and I'm pissed and I can't stop thinking about my sister or that bitch of a lunatic who might have been my last chance of ever finding her and I've want to hurt someone all morning. "Yeah, let's go."

* * *

><p>Ed Carrey was believed to have been in contact with the killer, at least until the killings had begun, and had been caught engaging in a copycat murder. They didn't expect to get much from him, but even a hint of where the real killer had been living or spending his time could be useful in writing the profile. And if this guy had any solid information about who the killer was, where he was now, or any of his plans, then they might have hit the jackpot.<p>

So far the guy wasn't talking much. He'd been in jail for a day and a half, and during that time Patterson had had officers waking him up to question him every few hours. They hadn't been planning on getting anything out of the suspect during those sessions. Those were to keep him tired and on the edge for this morning, for Mulder. Funny, really, considering Mulder was pretty sure he could give anyone a run for the money in the tired and on edge department.

He stalked into the room, letting his trench coat billow out, the door slamming behind him. His face was in its best don't-fuck-with-me mask. Not very hard to put on today, as he was already about this close to taking out his weapon and shooting the next guy who looked at him the wrong way. His head pounded. Samantha. Don't think about her.

The man sitting in cuffs at the table was a tall, skinny guy with a protruding Adam's apple, and he looked unwashed in his baggy orange jumpsuit. Probably was unwashed. He was in his twenties. He wore little glasses and his oily hair was blonde and curly. His skin was spattered with acne. Mulder forced himself not to stare at it. Ed gazed back at Mulder with a detached interest.

Mulder hated him on sight, the sick fuck. "Tell me, Ed," he began in a dangerous monotone, perfected in dozens of rooms like this, on dozens of suspects, "how did it feel to murder Simon? Was it everything you'd hoped for?"

If he'd pegged the guy right, he'd chosen to kill because he'd seen the rush that the real killer had gotten, and not because he really got off on it. Or because he wanted to make the real killer like him or respect him more. Anything but for the rush itself, and so he'd have been disappointed, even frightened or disgusted, by the act itself. Remembering it would throw him off and stir up the guilt and make it that much easier for Mulder to get something out of him.

Carrey was slow in replying, and when he did, it came with a contentedly wide smile that told Mulder he'd been wrong, wrong, wrong. "Tell _me_, Agent Mulder," he said. "Do you have any kids? Cute little sons or sweet little daughters. Maybe a niece or a nephew, or brother or a sister? Everyone's got somebody."

Mulder didn't respond at all, though for a moment he wanted nothing more than to spring across the table and smash this sick man's head into the wall. Ed didn't know about Samantha, couldn't know, but she was already intruding on every thought he had today.

"Well then," Carrey went on. "I'll assume you do." The smile widened. "Now imagine, Agent Mulder, that you have complete control over that little person. Imagine his life in your hands. His life, her life, doesn't matter. Now imagine wrapping your hands around her throat and squeezing it away, just like that. Can you imagine that, Agent Mulder?"

"Shut up," Mulder snapped, sneering, more disgusted with himself than with the greasy man sitting across from him. He didn't have to imagine. He'd been there. He could have saved her—when Samantha's life was in his useless hands and he'd let her slip away. He hated Carrey. He hated himself more. "Just shut the hell up, Ed."

"Oh, but I'm still answering your question," Carrey said. The fucking weasel was enjoying Mulder's pain, the rage building behind his eyes and the tense lines of his mouth. Mulder had to clamp down on it like he always could, turn the tables. Deal with the fact that he had been wrong about Ed Carrey's motives, and find a new way to do this. Get Samantha out of his mind so the thought of her didn't break him first. But how could he when all he wanted was to shut Carrey up with a fist to those too-straight teeth.

With a monumental effort Mulder pulled himself back into line, back into the hard-ass interrogator persona that was so important here. "Did you murder the other children? Can you answer _that_ question for me, Ed?"

Carrey shook his head slightly. "No, no, I need to go on, sorry. You did ask." He chuckled. "You see, I like a good fuck, Agent Mulder, and I'll bet you do too. But killing Simon was even better than that. Oh, so much better. Because _I_ was in control. You know, when I had that cord around his neck he jerked almost like I was fucking him. I owned him. You know how that feels, Agent Mulder?"

No I don't, you sick murdering sonofabitch. He forced the angry reply down. He had to be in control here. No. _Not_ "in control." Bastard was getting inside his mind now. His fists clenched and he took half a step forward before stopping himself short, breathing hard through clenched teeth.

Ed saw the movement and grinned again. "It's a beautiful moment, you know. They're so little, so sweet. So submissive. Those tiny little hands, little fingers. You don't even need to fuck 'em to feel it, though I won't say it doesn't help. Ha. Better than any woman. They're yours."

"It was you the whole time," Mulder intoned, all of his boiling anger pouring into the words. His fists were balled so tight they hurt. He was seething inside, leaning over Ed with wild eyes. "Wasn't it, Ed? Tell me or I'll kill you." He meant it. For Samantha and every other kid, every other brother who'd blamed himself for the handiwork of sick fucks like this. "I will _kill_ you."

The murderer wasn't even fazed. "Doesn't even have to be _your_ loved one, Agent Mulder. Someone else's will do. They struggle and they jerk and then they loll. Would it be cliché to say they're like rag dolls? I mean, you've obviously already got it in you, standing there looking at me like some—"

Something snapped in Mulder and he was over the table in a second, slamming his fist into Carrey's pimply face. His momentum tipped Carrey's chair over and they both crashed to the linoleum floor. Mulder's knees smashed into the tiles but the pain only fueled his wrath. He was on top of Carrey, straddling him. He punched him again and again and felt something in the man's face collapse with a pulpy crunch. Warm blood gushed onto Mulder's hand. He hit again harder, and _harder_ and heard another crunch—and then his wrist exploded with pain. It caught him by surprise. He fell back, panting, making a primitive noise deep in his throat and clutching the center of pain with his other hand. Oh God. He'd lost it. He'd reached the end of his rope and assaulted a defenseless man in custody. He'd lost it.

The guards were by his side by now, pulling him up and away from the groaning suspect. It had taken that long for them to cross the room and intervene—but how long was that long? He couldn't have been hitting Carrey for more than a few seconds. Mulder glanced down at the man on the floor. Carrey's face was slick with sweat and snot and blood, his nose smashed to the side and dumping even more red liquid down his face.

Mulder felt himself sobbing, dry-eyed but unable to control whatever the hell was bursting forth. He'd lost it, he'd lost it, he'd lost it like he'd lost his sister and the chance to save her and it was his fault and this was his fault and if the man got off even though he was the killer it would be his fault too.

Black stars and speckles were infringing on the edges of his vision, swirling in time with his throbbing headache. He closed his eyes and let the guards haul him stumbling away. He deserved this. This pain. All his fault.

And slowly, he began to come back to himself. He heard Jerry at his side, spouting useless platitudes and moving him out of the room. Sending the guards away. Mulder managed to collect himself in the hallway, and choked out, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Jerry stopped them there and stood, looking intently at Mulder with his hand gripping Mulder's arm. Mulder struggled feebly.

"What the hell was that?" Jerry demanded. Mulder managed to rock away and stand on his own, loosing his arm from Jerry's grip. He swayed but didn't fall. The black sparkles returned for a brief moment before floating away again. His hand and wrist were throbbing mercilessly.

Jerry had asked him a question. Right. Mulder took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He tried to think of the answer—what he'd been doing—but found that he couldn't. Carrey was hardly the most infuriating suspect he'd ever interviewed. Something had gone wrong today. He'd imagined the man choking the life out of Samantha and it had been too much to handle. It was Dana Scully's fault for bringing thoughts of her back into his life. Only it hadn't been Dana Scully whaling on a handcuffed man and he squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself not to break down. Not here.

"I don't know," he said after a few moments had passed. His voice sounded broken. He opened his eyes, took another breath, and tried to steady it. "I'd like to get back to the Bureau as soon as possible. Carrey's our man. He killed all of them."

Jerry was still staring at him like he'd just stepped off of a space ship or announced his engagement to Patterson. "You know there's going to be disciplinary action, don't you? Are you okay, Mulder?"

Now that was a laugh of a question. "Yes. I'm fine."

He started to walk away, but Jerry caught him by the elbow and went on. "I'm serious, when was the last time you slept? Or ate? You look like you're about to collapse. And can you tell me what the hell happened in there? Maybe I can back you up."

Mulder shook his head, and couldn't hold back another grimace when his headache intensified, somehow, even more. "Jerry, I can't deal with this right now. Come on. We've got to meet Patterson. Or I do. Why don't you explain to the police here that the Bureau will be disciplining me for my actions? I need that more than I need a nursemaid right now."

"What am I supposed to tell them?" Jerry asked, wide-eyed. "You just went crazy. They won't want to hear that, but unless you can give me a better explanation…"

"Tell them whatever the hell you want," Mulder said.

For a moment he thought Jerry might protest, but the other agent simply sighed resignedly and headed off in the direction of the blonde woman and the black cop. Mulder could see them at the end of the hall, the man on a telephone and the woman standing next to him with her arms crossed. Mulder left the building and made his way to his car.

He felt dazed, as if he'd just watched someone else beat up on a helpless prisoner. A murderer, but a skinny man cuffed to a chair nevertheless. His aching right hand was growing sticky with blood and the smell of it made him want to be sick. He'd have to wash that off before the meeting, but he wasn't going back into the station. He'd just have to deal with it on the drive back to the Bureau.

Sitting heavily in the driver's seat, Mulder allowed himself a moment of rest. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the headrest. Sleep was not far, despite the relentless pain in his head and the growing throb in his hand and wrist. It tugged at him, and he imagined just how nice it would be to keep his eyes closed, and forget about Patterson, about the case, about Samantha and Dana Scully and everything else.

He opened his eyes and pulled himself back to a normal sitting position. He would never forget and he would never be able to rest. Mindlessly, he went to start the ignition with his right hand. Agony flared in his wrist and with a strangled cry he almost dropped the keys.

_God_. He recognized the pain of a broken bone and held his arm up to the light to examine the injury. A deep bruise beginning to form where his hand met his wrist and the area was already puffy to touch. Twitching his fingers made him grunt in pain and the stupid decision to flex his wrist up and down left him sweating and cold and clutching the throbbing limb to his chest. It hurt. Oh, god, it hurt.

Well, this was what he got for punching an unarmed, cuffed man. Today he'd wrap it and maybe go to the ER if he had a chance. Maybe tomorrow.

Sighing, he started the car awkwardly with his left hand. Changing gears was going to be a bitch. He felt drained in the aftermath of the irrational fury that had gripped him. Oh hell.

After a moment he allowed himself the luxury of groaning out loud. He was exhausted. His headache raged on, and pain was racing up and down his hand in a blurry line connecting his middle knuckle and where the bones in his hand joined his…radius? Ulna? Whatever. The shifting agony was making his stomach flip and he was glad he hadn't eaten anything, not since—yesterday morning? Shit. Well, he hadn't been hungry anyway. He was lightheaded and sitting in the idling car was making him shiver.

Oh, and children were being murdered and families were being torn apart and Mulder wasn't doing a damn thing in his power to help them. So get a grip, Fox, he told himself, clenching his left hand into a useless fist. Stop wallowing in self-pity, Fox. Your problems—your _minor discomforts_—are nothing compared to what they're going through. Those families. Those children. You're selfish, Fox. Do you never think of anyone else? Do you have any idea what you're putting your mother through right now?

He closed his eyes and let his head fall into his hand, then down to the steering wheel. It was cold and hard and round against his knuckles. His head pounded. He was dizzy with lack of food and sleep and way too much pain. You're selfish, Fox.

He wondered at what point he'd let his father's voice become his conscience.

Mulder lifted his head. He glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard—it read 8:57—and realized that he'd been sitting in his car for almost ten minutes, feeling sorry for himself. Patterson wouldn't be happy.

He gritted his teeth and shifted to reverse. Pain. Agony. He forced it away and backed out of the parking space. Tried to guide the steering wheel with his knees and shift with his left but the wheel slipped as he was entering traffic and he grabbed it reflexively with his right hand. Oh fuck. A cold sweat pricked to life on his skin as the grating pain powered through his wrist and up his arm and down to the tip of his middle finger. He couldn't do this.

He pulled off the road without signaling, gritted his teeth at whoever honked at him, and jerked to a stop in some kind of loading zone clearly marked "No Parking." The world was swerving in and out of focus, and he cradled his arm against his chest.

After a moment, he fumbled his cell phone out of his briefcase. His left arm was trembling so hard he could barely hold the phone. God, his day was only getting better. Should he call a cab? He wasn't sure he had the cash, and it seemed like too much work to find out. He'd put Jerry's number in as speed dial 4—after Patterson, pizza delivery, and his mother's house—and he stabbed at the buttons on the bulky phone.

"Jerry Lamana," his partner answered tiredly after two rings.

"I—I can't drive," Mulder choked out.

"Mulder? Hello? What do you mean, you can't drive?"

Mulder took another deep breath and forced himself to relax. Jerry couldn't hear him lose it. He couldn't lose it. "I'm sorry, Jerry, it's…it's nothing. Not a big deal, I mean. My hand. Wrist. I…hurt it. I'll get it looked at. Right now I just need a ride back to the Bureau."

A pause on the other end. Then a long, slow exhale. "Sure, Mulder. Where are you?"


	3. Chapter 3

9:49 AM

Patterson was not happy. Granted he was rarely _happy_, as in jump-for-joy, clap your hands and sing songs about the goodness of the world happy. He didn't believe in the goodness of the world. Still, he usually managed to be less than infuriated.

Right now, he was infuriated.

But he composed his face into an expressionless mask and stared flatly at his rogue agent. Just long enough to make him uncomfortable—though of course Mulder was staring right back at him, hazel eyes wide with feigned innocence.

Patterson leaned forward and spoke softly. "Agent Mulder, you may have cost us this case."

Of course, Mulder refused to be cowed even in the face of his own blunder. His words came out with a desperate edge. "Actually, sir, not only did I catch the guy but I kicked his ass for good measure."

Desperate wasn't quite the word. Mulder sounded like he was on the edge of hysteria, masking it with forced calm and sarcasm. He probably would have fooled anyone else. Patterson shook his head and let a little sneer show on his face. "Your opinion is going to mean nothing in court since you've apparently gone insane and assaulted our suspect in the interview room. I won't be surprised if the case is thrown out altogether on account of your misconduct."

Mulder gritted his teeth—Patterson could see the muscles in his jaw contact. The young agent's voice began low and even but escalated as he spoke. "Bill, you know as well as I do that Ed Carrey's our man, and if the teams can't find the evidence to back that up then they should be the ones in this room, getting their asses reamed for not doing their jobs well enough. You'd have nothing on this case if it wasn't for me. So don't _you_ try to make _me_ feel guilty for ruining our case because I solved the damn thing. I'm on to you, Bill. I know what you're doing!"

"Oh, Mulder." Patterson smiled. Mulder made himself feel guilty just fine without any help. "You don't know that the other teams _won't_ be in here after you. In fact, I'm quite disappointed in the crime scene unit for missing the prints on the door. Just because they were at the bottom of the handle." Really, there was no excuse. "But right now I am not concerned with them, as we are here to discuss your conduct at the station. So, are you going to try to offer me any excuse for your behavior? I'd like to get that out of the way."

Bill could see Mulder's shoulders tense, but to his credit the younger agent said nothing. Mulder also seemed to be guarding his right arm, he noticed, never letting it leave cover of his left hand, and filed the information away for later. Mulder'd probably bruised something during his assault on Carrey.

"Good," Bill went on after a slight pause. "Because your actions were inexcusable. You're aware that BSU needs you, but even you have to understand that the Bureau will not tolerate such blatant disregard for protocol. You are not too special for discipline, Agent Mulder. And I will see to it personally that you understand this."

Another subtle shift in Mulder's outwardly stony facial features, and the younger man might have been about to cry.

"So, Mulder, today you are going to visit the victims' families and apprise them of the current situation. This will be your punishment—you'll be glad to know that no part of this incident will be entered onto your permanent record. But if word reaches me that you have acted inappropriately while conducting these sessions I will not intervene in the Bureau's disciplinary action as I have done at this time."

A tiny nod and a swallow. "Yes, sir."

"You will call on the first family by noon today. You will deliver a prepared set of statements regarding the case."

Mulder nodded again, a bigger one this time, and winced. It only lasted for a moment, a flicker, but it was enough. "You have a headache," Patterson observed.

"I'm fine, sir," Mulder forced out. It was the tattered tone of someone just barely keeping it together. For a moment Patterson considered revising his punishment—if Mulder couldn't maintain his composure today, they'd both be in deep trouble. But he said nothing. Mulder would keep it together because he had to keep it together. Not for his own sake—Mulder didn't give a shit about himself—but for the grieving families. And if he had an emotional breakdown when he was finished, well, that would be neither a terrible thing nor unexpected. When that was over Mulder would be more focused, too angry at himself for losing his cool, especially around Lamana, who would accompany him, to let his composure slip for a while after that.

"Is there anything else?" Mulder asked.

"Yes," Bill said. "Take some aspirin. Get something to eat. Maybe take a nap. And try to finish a usable profile on Carrey before you leave today."

Mulder smirked through the pain. "Thanks, Mom."

At Patterson's nod of dismissal he left.

Of course, Mulder wouldn't take any of his advice, except to finish the profile today. If anything, he'd continue running himself to the ground in rebellion. But that was fine. That was how Mulder worked. That was how profiles were written and killers were caught. Hell, Mulder wouldn't know what to do with a good night's sleep if it bit him in the ass.

* * *

><p>Scully went to the basement. It was shocking to see the walls of her office blank and the floor occupied by bulky '80s copiers rather than Mulder's cluttered desk. The filing cabinets that held her life's work were tucked away in a corner, dusty. Scully glanced over her shoulder before approaching them. She wasn't supposed to be here, and the good girl alarm that had kept her following rules for so many years was going off loudly in her head. They could kick her out for trespassing. What if someone came down to copy something and found her rooting through FBI files? Trainee or not, that was a bona fide federal crime.<p>

She stoutly ignored her fears and started to sort through the files, looking for anything pertaining to time travel. She found herself wanting to both smile and cry as the files gave way beneath her fingers. Mulder would be proud. Breaking into the FBI basement—trespassing, anyway—looking for time travel files, assuming that the answer to her problems was in the X-files …if he were here he'd be making some joke about how she turned him on or how they should get married. And then she'd smile and shoot something right back at him, and everything would be right with the world, just for that moment.

She closed her eyes and sagged against the wall as she realized that she'd been toying with the same file for some time, one marked VIVISECTIONS, as her mind had taken her eleven years into the future. Vivisections. God. She stood straighter, put the file back and kept flipping through the packed cabinet. She couldn't afford to get emotional now. Nothing was in order, not even Mulder's usual haphazard order.

Maybe if she could gather some proof, this young and angry Mulder would listen to her. She'd been wrong to bring up his sister, she knew, and the memory of his pain made her feel acutely guilty. She had no excuse. She'd been terrified this morning, but so what? Mulder would never do that to her. She missed him more than she had thought possible after only a day. How the hell was she supposed to cope with a lifetime without him?

She set her jaw. It wasn't going to come to that, was how. Whatever she had to do, she would see that it didn't come to that.

* * *

><p>March 2, 2000<p>

9:02 AM

The X-Files Office

Scully hadn't shown up for work yet today. Mulder glanced at his watch again, then at the green and white Starbucks cup sitting untouched at one end of the desk, probably lukewarm by now. She _could_ just be late. She'd been up late last night doing that autopsy for him, after all. He couldn't expect her to be in bright and early every day. He should call her. Or maybe he should try to get some of his own work done. He had at least fifty pages of witness reports to read this morning. But what if something was wrong? He could call her. But then he might wake her up, and she'd be annoyed, and he'd have no excuse but Scully, you were an hour late for work, and I'm too needy and pathetic to let you sleep in for once. Sleeping was hardly a sin. Hell, she wasn't even technically supposed to be here until nine, though for the last seven years they'd both arrived by eight, if not before. Even when she had cancer she'd been here bright and early. What could be worse than cancer, to keep her away from him? He should call her. He'd called at worse hours, insomniac Mulder hours, and she'd never held it against him. He should call because she should be up by now. She really should. And if she wasn't she'd probably appreciate being woken up. Maybe her alarm clock was broken. After all, it was…9:04.

Mulder pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open. Speed dial one. He chewed on his knuckle as it rang. Pick up, Scully, pick up, pick up pick up pick up.

"Hi, you've reached Dana Scully. Please leave a message after the tone."

Damn it! He closed his phone, wishing it would make a more dramatic noise than that little muffled _clip_.

This was ridiculous. She could be in the shower. She could be on her way here. Maybe she left her cell at home. Maybe she hadn't heard it ring. There were plenty of possibilities—or she could be unconscious and in need of help or even kidnapped and waiting for him to notice her absence. She never disappeared on him, never ditched him. She hated being late for work. He'd delayed long enough, violently flinging pencils into the ceiling and accidentally reading the same sentence of one witness report over and over again without taking it in.

He strode out of the basement without his coat and was parking in front of her apartment building before he'd really even considered another course of action. Time was still accelerated as he took the elevator to her floor and let himself into her apartment.

He went into her room and time stopped.

Scully was lying face up on her bed, limp and small, clad only in blue silk pajamas. She looked so vulnerable. Her eyes were open and staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. She was—oh God—she was still breathing, and her pulse was moving under his fingers. He could barely remember what vital signs to check. He fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 9-1-1, trying to hold her as he spoke urgently into the phone. Her hair was splayed out on her pillow, fuzzy with static and mussed. How long had she been like this? Oh God. Mulder's stomach had been kicked out at some point in the last thirty seconds, only he couldn't remember when. She was still warm, at least. Still alive. Scully. He ran his fingers over her tranquil, smooth face, and pressed his lips against hers in a desperate, pathetic gesture. As if a kiss from the prince would wake up Sleeping Beauty. As if he was a prince. She remained catatonic, of course. How had he let this happen to her?

The EMTs arrived in a rush of sound and noise and bustle and Mulder followed the stretcher out to the street and into the ambulance where they attached tubes and wires to her and told him to get out of the way. He couldn't comply. He asked the EMTs what had happened and they said they weren't sure yet. The woman who answered sounded annoyed and a moment later asked him again to move out of her way.

His mind flipped desperately through the possibilities. How long would it take for them to figure out if the cancer was back? The virus she'd somehow contracted from that bee? Was this yet another side effect of her abduction five years ago? He'd kill those bastards if it was.

They told him that she was stabilized. As if that meant anything.

He followed her gurney through the hospital, alternately ignoring and flashing his badge at the doctors and nurses who tried to tear him away from her side. She came to rest at a bed in the ICU where a chubby young doctor told him that, as Scully's next of kin, he had paperwork to do. The doctor wouldn't take no for an answer. The doctor wouldn't even take Mulder's knocking his clipboard out of his hands and screaming at him to do_ something_ as an answer. So Mulder apologized, then picked up the clipboard and took the stack of papers and found a seat by the door to Scully's room.

He felt numb.

This could not be happening.


	4. Chapter 4

March 2, 1989

The Copier Room

Rifling through the folders in the X-file cabinets, Scully pondered the coincidence that had led to her meeting Mulder in his office that morning. She knew he'd spent most of his three years in the VCS moving from crappy motel to crappy motel, following killers across the country like some strange rock band groupie. A real Dead Head. She winced at her own pun. He was rarely home in D.C., let alone actually in his office. The chances that she'd just happen to run into him were slim.

So maybe—and this thought was undoubtedly too idealistic, yet too attractive to shake—maybe the coincidence of their meeting was meaningful. Maybe she'd been sent back in time to this particular day specifically because she would encounter Mulder. He'd opened his door while she was standing in front of it. That sort of thing rarely happened outside of the movies.

Maybe Mulder needed help, and she'd been sent to help him. A sort of new age Clarence to keep George Bailey from jumping off the FBI bridge. She claimed to believe in God, after all, and miracles. Couldn't this be one of those?

It was an attractive idea, being an angel, for more than just the obvious reasons. It would mean this wasn't just some cruel accident, some X-file gone wrong. It would mean she'd have something to accomplish here, a quest of sorts, before she could return home. Once she saved Mulder, she would wake up and it would be 2000 again. Poof. Had to be, right?

She flipped past folders labeled VISIONARY ENCOUNTERS WITH THE DEAD (she remembered pulling it out so many years ago, only to shove it back in because of course she didn't believe in that kind of thing—she couldn't!) and another labeled HUMAN MUTATIONS. Of course, that brought back memories too. She was beginning to doubt there was anything in there that didn't.

She knew it was a stretch, the idea of having been sent back in time to help Mulder. A stretch and one more piece of evidence that the world, her world, really did revolve around him. But maybe if it were true there would be another sign. Something else would happen that would throw her unexpectedly into his path. And then she could save him from himself or the serial killer of the week or Bill Patterson, or all three. Then she'd be back to her old life and her old Mulder. That was how it happened in the movies, after all.

Even as she fantasized, she recognized her own need to feel in control of the situation by actively pursuing a way out. She knew it was almost impossible that she was actually here to play Clarence. And that was assuming she hadn't already blown her chance this morning. On the other hand, Mulder was obviously in need of a friend, and if she was stuck here she was damn well going to try to be one.

She skimmed a dozen useless file names, then pulled out one that read ANACHRONISMS, 1970-1980. She sighed involuntarily. In another life she'd be the first to decry the practice of searching for answers in coincidence. By definition coincidences had no meaning. So she knew, of course, that chances were that unless she found the answer, here, in the X-files, no amount of saving Mulder would get her home.

MULDER, SAMANTHA ANN. Scully swallowed and pulled the folder from the drawer, turning it over in her hands. She hadn't realized that it had been handled by the FBI, or that it had been relegated to the X-Files while Mulder still worked in the BSU. But here it was, the same file she'd-

The whirring of the elevator startled her and the folder slid easily from her grasp. Shit. The papers and photos fluttered across the floor and she followed them down into an awkward crouch.

Then it hit her. This would be the meaningful coincidence she was waiting for, the divine intervention…whatever. Mulder would step out of the elevator and find her holding Samantha's file. _And then what? _she though with a sinking feeling so sudden she paused in gathering the papers. If this morning was any indication he'd just be enraged. He'd yell at her again and probably storm away, if he didn't simply call security to have her removed.

She waited for the elevator doors to open, her heart in her throat.

But the man who stepped around the corner was not Mulder. He was shorter, paunchier, lighter-haired, and much less handsome, though he looked vaguely familiar. Probably someone she passed every day at the Bureau. Scully nodded a greeting to the agent as she continued to scoop the contents of the file folder from the floor. She felt numb and jumpy with nerves.

"Need some help with that?" the agent asked. He smiled and stooped to grab a cluster of papers that had settled beneath one copy machine. But his smile faded as he stood up, glancing over the paper in his hand. He looked at her with wide eyes, and his voice hardened. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Excuse me?" Scully replied, trying to sound sure of herself. She shuffled the rest of the contents of Samantha's file back into the folder and stood up, straightening her jacket and trying to look dignified despite the fear thrumming through her body. She was suddenly very aware of the fact that she didn't have an identifying badge clipped to her suit.

"This is Agent Mulder's sister," the agent said slowly.

Scully nodded, unsure of what this meant. Did this man know Mulder?

"What do you want with that?" the agent asked. "Who _are_ you?"

"My name is Dana Scully," she said. She tried to sound sure of herself. "Mind if I ask who you are?"

For a moment, the agent looked annoyed. He glanced down at the paper in his hands before speaking. "Special Agent Jerry Lamana," he said.

Of course. Mulder's old partner. Scully remembered him in an instant, four or five years older, telling Mulder in the hallway outside their office that he'd really just "tagged along." Then he'd stolen Mulder's profile and died a gruesome death in an elevator. Scully nodded in recognition.

"Now, again," Lamana said. "What are you doing down here? You're not _Agent_ Dana Scully, are you?" He stopped glaring at her for a moment to open the top of one of the copiers and slide his own 8x10 photo face-down over the warm glass. He closed the top but didn't press the button to start the copying. He still held on to the paper from Samantha's file, a medical report filed in 1971.

Scully took a deep breath. "I'm a trainee at Quantico."

Lamana frowned. "Well, Ms. Scully, last I checked trainees weren't allowed to wander FBI buildings without identification."

His tone was dangerous and Scully swallowed. She could lie about having lost her ID card, but that would be too easily proven false. "Yes, sir, I know."

The agent looked at her like he wasn't quite sure what to make of her. "So unless you have an excellent story for me," he said after a moment, "I'm going to have to have you removed from the building." He paused, and glanced at the paper in his hand again. "And I'm serious, what in God's name do you want with this file?"

Scully was caught on his earlier words. Unless you have an excellent story. She had one of those, all right, but it was hard to imagine that anyone else would believe it when Mulder had dismissed it out of hand. Then again, there was no lie she could tell that would absolve her of her trespassing, and certainly none that would allow her to keep her access to the X-files. Lamana was staring at her, irritation clearly building. In a moment, Scully realized that she had nothing to lose. "I have a story," she said.

"You do now." Lamana sounded skeptical.

Scully nodded. Somehow, though her mind was made up, it was still hard to spit out the words. "I—" It was what her Mulder would have done. No matter how "I am a special agent, or I will be. I'll be assigned to the X-files with Mulder until at least the year 2000. But today I woke up in my own past and I have no idea why, or how to get back. I can only hope the answer is here, in these files."

Jerry Lamana stared at her for a moment, and then snorted in laughter. "Well, I asked for a story," he said, "and I guess you delivered. Right. Assigned to the X-files. With _Mulder_. In the _future_." He shook his head. "I'm actually not sure which of those is the least plausible."

Scully's whole body went taut. Whatever chance she had was slipping inexorably away. "Please. I need you to hear me out. The answer must be here, in these files. We've seen time travel before. I know it's possible. I just need time, ironically, time to find figure this out and find my way home."

Lamana still looked bemused. "So, uh, how long have you been partnered up with old Spooky?"

"Seven years," Scully said, surprising herself with the force of emotion behind her words. Even Lamana seemed taken aback.

"Now I know you must be nuts," he said. "Nobody lasts more than a year as his partner. I mean, I've been with him nine months and God knows he's ready to have my head on a platter and I'm not so far from letting him have it."

He wasn't dismissing her outright. That had to be a good sign. _The sign she'd been looking for?_ He was at least interested in what she might know about Mulder, who was probably something of an enigma to him even now. "I can tell you everything, Agent Lamana. Anything you want to know about me or Mulder or our work. I'm only asking you to hear me out."

Lamana glanced at Samantha's medical report still in his hand. His indecision played out clearly on his face but after a moment he sighed, and nodded. "You've got fifteen minutes," he said. "And this had better be good."

Scully could have collapsed in relief. Instead she began to talk. From her assignment to the X-files to her work as a scientist to her closeness with Mulder to going to sleep in the new millennium and waking up eleven years too early, she told him everything she could remember. Lamana stared at her, mouth slightly open, but barely moved or interrupted as she spoke. She tried to tell him things about Mulder that only a partner would know, things about his and Patterson's relationship she'd learned that might ring true for Lamana now. There was too much for fifteen minutes, really, but she spoke earnestly and by the time she was done, she was shaking from the emotional exertion of laying herself bare to a relative stranger.

Lamana blinked once or twice, shook his head, and pressed a button on the copier. The machine churned for a few seconds, then spit out copies of a crime scene photo: a dark-haired child, his face bloated and neck bruised, laying naked against a stark linoleum floor. The black and white copies were strangely artistic and Scully looked away.

"I know," she said, and swallowed, "I know that I must sound insane to you."

Agent Lamana nodded. "You do," he said. But he still didn't make a move or say anything else. Finally, after a long silence that made Scully squirm, he said, "So tell me, did your Mulder ever beat up on a suspect during an interrogation?"

Scully's brow furrowed at the question—why would he want to know that? Had Mulder done something?—but she nodded slightly. Another question she could answer. "He's never dealt well with cases involving children." Or involving his family, or Alex Krycek for that matter, but she'd need much longer than fifteen minutes to explain that. "He gets frustrated and he can have a temper. I've seen it before."

"And when he travels," Lamana said. "Why separate rooms? Always separate rooms?" He looked Scully up and down. "Oh. Never mind."

"Nightmares," Scully said. Lamana looked surprised but nodded. "If it's a bad case. If he's sleeping at all."

"Because he doesn't?"

Scully had to smile at that. "Sometimes when he gets on a case there's no stopping him. Normal human needs, like sleep and food? Not a chance."

"And what makes him happy?"

"When anyone actually listens to him," Scully said. That smirk when she was finally outnumbered by believers. "When he solves a case and has the evidence to show the world he's right." Except that this Mulder had dozens of people hanging on every word, waiting for the gospel of Spooky to lead them to the latest victim, the latest killer. Solving a case for this Mulder only meant flying across the country to immerse himself in a new set of horrors. She shook her head. "No. That can't be it now. He's probably only happy when… when he gets to go to sleep and for at least a little while, the guilt is gone. The responsibility."

Lamana chewed on his lip. "You know, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I might believe you."

Scully resisted the urge to thank him prolifically and only nodded again, and licked dry lips.

The agent shook his head. "Christ. I need proof, some kind of proof," he said. "That you are who are say you are. I know," he said so suddenly that Scully almost jumped. "What can you tell me about our latest case? It would have been in the news. In your classes."

"What case?" Scully asked. She could barely believe that he was still willing to listen to her. But would she remember the details of a case she'd maybe read about eleven years ago? She had offered to prove herself to Mulder in the same way, but it had been a desperate strategy then. It made her more than nervous now.

"The media's calling it the D.C. Strangler."

Scully chewed her lip and glanced down at the crime scene photo copies. D.C. Strangler. It sounded familiar. Like she'd heard it and read about it and even had opinions on it once upon a time, but had lost them to a decade's inattention. But the details had to be there, just on the edge of her memory. She strained, repeating the words in her mind as if—

The D.C. Strangler. Of course. It had been in the news and a hot topic at the academy and the memories rushed back, bringing with them a feeling of warm reassurance. "Everyone thought that there were two killers, and original and a copycat, possibly an accomplice." She closed her eyes, picturing the headlines and days in class devoted to the case at Quantico. "But there was some missed evidence, and, and possibly an interview with the suspect that tipped us off. It was never made clear exactly what happened." She remembered Jerry's question and ignored a jolt of concern. "But the team realized that the copycat they thought they'd caught was actually the original killer. There was no copycat." Lamana was looking more and more impressed. "The children were found strangled and naked and some showed signs of abuse before death. The final profile, the one used in court, described the way that the perp liked to feel in control of his victims. That he was motivated by the emotional high that came from robbing the life of a loved child. His victims had always been shown affection in a public place by a parent or older sibling—someone had bought the victim a toy, kissed the victim, or something. The profiler wrote that the killer had probably killed before, animals in his childhood and later possibly a young family member or friend. They found out later that his cousin had disappeared eight years earlier."

"The suspect's name?" Lamana asked cautiously.

Scully pursed her lips and closed her eyes again, trying to picture the name in newsprint or in something she'd read for class. It had been the name of some actor, but not one she really liked. She guessed. "Carrey?"

Lamana crossed his arms over his chest. "Almost none of that's been released to the press," he said. "Some of it _I've_ never heard."

Scully kept her voice even. "I'm telling you what I remember, Agent Lamana. I know how my story sounds. I'm sorry. But I have no other explanation."

"It's not a believable lie," Lamana said.

"I know."

"But I'm hesitant to assume that because it would make for a terrible cover-up, it's the truth. You might just be a bad liar. You might be covering a better lie by pretending to be really bad at this. Maybe you just saw _Back to the Future._ I sure did."

He was profiling her. He had to be. And he'd better be good enough to recognize that she was telling the truth. "Not recently," she said. Somehow, she doubted he'd believe her if she told him she wasn't really the sci-fi type.

"But that was a pretty damned accurate description of the case you just gave me, and I don't see how you'd be involved. Or why you'd be telling me if you were." He sighed and kneaded his temples with his fingers. "What are you after, really?"

That was perhaps the most difficult question he'd asked her. Scully tried to answer as honestly as she could. "I want…I want to go home. But if I can't do that, I want to help Mulder. I think he needs it. He may need _me_."

"Why?"

Scully let out a short, embarrassed laugh. It had sounded facile enough in her own head, but it was the only answer she had. "I think—I want to believe—that I'm here for a reason. That Mulder is that reason, and that if I can save him I might save myself as well. And if I'm wrong, well… when I talked to him this morning, I could see that he was lost. I know that you don't know me now, and neither does he, but in my life he's my closest friend." The adrenaline rush of trying to convince Lamana of her truthfulness was fading and she could feel the reality of her isolation rushing back. Her voice cracked and she stopped. She couldn't lose her composure again.

The older agent blew out a long breath. "You're right about one thing at least, and that's that Spooky's not doing so well. I don't see how he's going to last much longer in this game without some kind of tender love and care. And he sure as hell doesn't want it from me."

It was a metaphor, of course, an exaggeration, but Scully still had to swallow down the lump that formed at the back of her throat at the words. "I just want to help."

"I believe you do," he said, gathering his copies from the machine and tucking them into a folder he'd kept under his arm. "And fuck me if I'm not going to help you do it. I'm going to make you Patterson's new pet profiler."

Scully felt her jaw drop. "What?"

The older agent smiled a little. "No one else in this world will listen to your story. But you keep up like that and they'll sure as hell listen to your profiles. Come on. You'll be reunited with Spooky in no time."

* * *

><p>2000<p>

9:55 AM

Scully appeared to be sleeping now. Mulder watched her from an uncomfortable chair by the side of her bed, his chin resting on his hands and his elbows on his knees. This was the worst kind of déjà vu. Being the helpless watcher, the source of her pain.

No one had any idea what was wrong with her, which was almost worse than her abduction or her cancer because there was no one to blame. Mulder grimaced at the thought. No. This was no worse or better for the simple reason that Dana Scully was dead to the world and there was nothing he could do to save her. Abnormal goddamn brain activity. He wanted to shake the doctors by the shoulders and demand to know what was abnormal about it, what caused it, why the hell weren't they all in here trying to fix her!

But he'd learned restraint at some point, except for maybe the clipboard thing, and only seethed inside. He hated being so helpless, when this had to be happening because of his work on the X-files, because of him. Her problems always traced back to him, somehow. She might deny it but he knew it was true. The doctors and nurses had done all they could. They weren't the ones to blame. He should have been out there, finding out how to fix her if it killed him. If only he had somewhere to start.

He reached over and stroked her face, her pale cheek, her hair, her lips. He hated being helpless almost as much as he hated seeing her like this. There had to be a reason for this. Nothing happened without a reason in their line of work. Maybe Cancerman was behind it, maybe the aliens, maybe some other group. It didn't matter. He would find out and he would make the bastards pay.


	5. Chapter 5

1989

11:16 AM

Mulder downed another two Tylenol. It had only been an hour since the last two but the throbbing in his hand was getting unbearable again and he couldn't wait any longer. He was typing his profile one-handedly and it was taking much longer than he'd hoped or expected. The whole exercise was frustrating. Everything was in his brain, but the pain grating in his wrist made his thoughts fuzzy and his movements clumsy so that he could neither articulate well nor type faster than his left fingers could pick at the keys. He felt light-headed like he might pass out soon and every so often the screen wavered. A nauseous weight had settled in his stomach some time ago and pressed outwards. He was anticipating being sick, and just hoped it wouldn't happen before he had a chance to run to the bathroom.

He wasn't sure if Patterson had meant he wanted the profile before Mulder left to notify the families of their progress or before Mulder left for the night. But he wasn't going to crawl back and ask and he sure as hell wasn't going to let Patterson be disappointed or victorious because he turned the damn thing in late. He knew it was absurd, pride and a never-ending pissing contest getting in the way of practicality. But dammit, he should have known. For all he knew Patterson had told him already and he'd been too distracted to understand.

Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate… He had to find his way into Ed Carrey's twisted thoughts and stay there, and he had to coordinate his fingers so that they stabbed the right keys, and he had to keep his stomach settled and keep his body upright in the chair. He couldn't let his headache or throbbing wrist or dizziness distract him or bring him tumbling down.

If only he could type faster with a trembling left hand. If only the world wasn't lurching sickeningly…oh, shit. He tipped forward, instinctively wanting to be on the ground as everything spun around him. He pushed his chair away from the desk and computer and dropped to the carpet on his hands and knees—right on his hands and his right wrist splintered in agony and he collapsed onto his side under the desk. His head was spinning and the pain pushed his thoughts away, so that it was all he could do to curl up on his side and not cry out.

"Mulder. Mulder. Come on, Mulder."

Something was slapping at his cheek. He groaned feebly and after a moment it stopped.

"Are you awake? What happened?"

_Shut up_. He hadn't quite managed to say the words out loud. Something was wrong with his vocal cords. The voice spoke again and it sounded very familiar.

"Mulder, come on. Wake up. I'll call the paramedics."

Something about the last string of words percolated Mulder's mind and he opened his eyes, lucid again. More or less. "No," he said hoarsely. He still felt too lousy to get up.

"No?" Jerry's voice repeated incredulously. "Mulder, if there was ever a time I'd say it's now." The agent was peering down at him, unsure what to do. Mulder could practically see the cogs turning. Call the paramedics anyway? Risk angering the Spooky? _Don't_ call them and risk something worse? Was Mulder even awake enough to know what he was refusing? Jerry was the Bureau's best, all right. Cream of the goddamn crop.

"I just need…some water," Mulder managed. It was probably true. He tried to sit up but pain stabbed at the base of his skull and careened through his wrist and hand. He clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut in a desperate attempt to ward off the agony. "Jerry. Give me a hand."

"You need a lot more than a hand," Jerry said. He helped Mulder out from under the desk and into a sitting position. Panting, Mulder leaned against one of the desk's legs when Jerry let go.

"Maybe a hand is all I need," he said. He noticed that his thinking was still garbled and he'd meant that he could use a replacement. He considered clarifying but supposed that it was all nonsense anyway.

Jerry at least seemed to get that Mulder was incoherent and didn't press him for more. "Water," the older agent muttered, looking around as if it might suddenly appear. "Right. I'll be right back with that."

Mulder managed a strained smile as his partner left the room. Then he let his head fall back against the wooden leg of the desk. The back of his skull collided with a dull thump and pain throbbed through it. He felt like shit. He wanted to go to sleep. He felt sick and thought he might need to vomit, soon. Maybe what he really wanted was hook himself up to an IV pumping some of the good stuff, go numb and dull and forget that there was ever a world out here. Oh, God. He groaned out loud in the solitude of his office.

Jerry returned a little while later with a small paper cup full of water. Mulder looked up at him listlessly. The older agent handed the cup to Mulder, watched him sip from it with a hand that wouldn't stop trembling, and said, "I'm telling Patterson you're not going."

"Not going?" Mulder repeated. He couldn't think well enough around the pain to fathom what Jerry was talking about.

"To visit the victims' families. I'll do it. You'll go to the hospital."

"I have a profile to write," Mulder protested weakly. He tried to gesture up at his computer but the water in the cup sloshed and he gave up. "Patterson wants it today. I can't go to the hospital." He hated the hospital almost as much as he hated Patterson.

"Mulder, don't make me tell you you look like hell."

He snorted a short unamused laugh. "Thank you. You do wonders for my self-esteem."

Jerry looked at him, probably trying to think of a polite way to remind him he had no self-esteem. Instead the agent plowed on. "This profile can wait. We _caught_ him. You know Patterson just wants something to convince the jury with next month. So I can go and be the bearer of bad news and you can get that arm taken care of. How's that sound?" Jerry loomed over him now, seeking a good angle by which to help him up. Mulder ignored his efforts, closing his eyes and leaning his head back again.

He spoke flatly without moving. "Jerry, if I go to the hospital now they won't let me out." His hand and wrist were throbbing, stealing his attention, and he wondered why he was bothering to protest. Maybe a hospital stay wouldn't be bad thing. But hell, it would get in the way of his life.

"Why?" Jerry was asking. "Why would they keep you, Mulder?" He sounded like he was talking to a little kid. "Oh. You haven't been eating or sleeping," he said, then sighed. "Listen, Mulder, I won't let them keep you too long. I promise. Come on, let's go."

Mulder groaned theatrically. "You're not my mother," he complained. Even with his eyes closed he was dizzy. "Even my mother didn't mother me this much."

"Okay," Jerry said decisively. "We're going to the hospital right now. I'll even finish the damn profile."

"No," Mulder moaned, but he was fading out again. A buzzing in his ears was drowning out all other noise. Jerry was too damned stupid to write the profile. Mulder felt strong hands grasp him beneath his arms and a voice, half-lost in the buzzing, said, "Okay Mulder, easy up now."

Mulder opened pushed his eyes open and tried to help Jerry help him up. The fuzz was starting to fade from his ears and eyes but he felt suddenly, viciously, nauseous. He doubled over in Jerry's grasp and the older agent dropped him on his wrist.

_Pain._ Reverberating pain, tearing up the flesh and bone and twisting his hand from his arm, deep and wrong and unbearable. He screamed, then writhed and moaned, making fearsome gargoyle faces with eyes squeezed shut and teeth bared. He cradled his arm against his stomach. Oh God, it hurt. Oh Jesus.

He became aware after a moment that Jerry was saying something, one word, over and over again—calling his name. The pain was receding. Mulder was making a low, pitiful, tear-choked noise that was either "ow-ow-ow" or "oh-oh-oh" and forced himself to shut up. He lay on the floor, panting, unmoving. The weakness he felt was pervasive and he didn't think he could move if he wanted to.

Then the churning in his stomach intensified and he found the motivation. He pushed himself up and crawled with his elbows to the trashcan under his desk, grabbing it to him and retching uncontrollably for a few moments. He didn't hawk up much and fell to the floor again when he was done. It was a good thing the carpet was clean in this office, he thought, or he'd be covered in dust.

Jerry was hovering and seemed reluctant to touch him, but eventually helped to ease him back to a sitting position, asking all the while if Mulder was okay and how he was feeling. He was still feeling like shit, to be honest, but he didn't waste the breath on telling Jerry.

"Are you ready to go to the hospital now?" Jerry asked when Mulder was once again leaning up against his desk.

Mulder took a shuddering breath and nodded. He felt damp with sweat and a little too cold. The pain in his hand was savage.

"Okay," Jerry said. "Okay. Good. Can you, uh, can you stand on your own?"

Mulder managed a snort of laughter, though it made his head hurt even more. "What the fuck do you think, Jerry?" Jerry looked hurt and Mulder regretted his harshness. "I'm sorry," he said, and meant it. "I know you're trying to help." Hell, Jerry was not only trying to care for him but was carrying out Patterson's punishment for him _and_ offering to finish the profile. Mulder should at least be acting thankful. The man had no reason to go to such great lengths for a pain-in-the-ass partner like Mulder.

"I'll call an ambulance, then," Jerry said. He went over to Mulder's desk and picked up a phone.

Then the door creaked open and Mulder heard the phone click down prematurely to its hook. Mulder struggled to see who had come in. It was probably Patterson or some other agent. Shit. He couldn't let them see anything but him at his best and he was miles away from there right now. Finally he found the leverage he needed and turned around.

It was Dana Scully.

Oh hell no.

"Get out of here!" he snarled, and in one incensed moment actually pushed himself to his feet. Holding onto his desk with his good hand and holding the bad arm to his abdomen he didn't collapse. All of the emotions of the morning were rushing back and he could feel the anger buoying him up, adrenaline boosting him with energy that exhaustion, pain, too little food and too much coffee had sapped from him. He released the desk violently and took a step toward her, his face twisted in a grimace that was equal parts pain and rage. "I don't care who you think you are," he gritted, took another step and collapsed.

The silence that followed his outburst was broken in a second as both Jerry and Dana Scully rushed to his side. He could feel Scully's small cool hands dancing across his skin, feeling his pulse and his forehead, probing his wrist, checking his eyes, smoothing his sweat-dampened hair.

Jerry and Dana Scully were talking over him and he only heard snatches of their conversation as he faded in and out of consciousness. "His pulse is…hospital" "I'll call" "…happened? "Collapsed…broken… station" "He needs…oh Mulder…with him" "…you sure?" "I think he's waking up. We may not need to call an ambulance." "Could you drive him?" "Yes, of course, and I think he'd prefer that."

Mulder opened his eyes and blinked. Dana Scully's face was taking up most of his vision. He moaned an unhappy greeting.

"Mulder, how are you feeling?"

He didn't answer, focusing instead on taking stock of his condition and banishing the dark fuzz of unconsciousness from his brain. Dana Scully watched him intently.

"If you can get up, Mulder, I'm going to drive you to the hospital. If not, I'll call an ambulance. I know you don't want that. I won't hurt you, Mulder. Can you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yeah," Mulder grunted. He looked for his partner. Jerry was standing near the door, apparently ready to leave. Well of course. It had to be almost noon. Mulder was making Jerry late for Mulder's appointment.

Jerry nodded as their eyes met. "You can trust her. Patterson likes her."

Patterson? What the hell?

Dana Scully spoke again. "Mulder, can you tell me how you're feeling? Do you want me to call an ambulance?"

He was _not_ going to be carted out of here in an ambulance. Mulder summoned what strength he had and whispered, "Drive me." No matter what Jerry said he didn't trust Dana Scully, couldn't imagine how she knew Jerry or why Patterson was interested in her, and didn't want to go to the hospital at all but God damn it he wasn't going _anywhere_ in an ambulance. At least Scully understood that.

"Do you need a moment first?"

Mulder nodded. The carpet beneath his head ruffled his damp hair and he realized suddenly that he must look like a little boy to the people standing over him. Shit, he needed more than a moment. But he sat up anyway, fought down twin upsurges of nausea and dizziness, and looked at Jerry, who was still hovering by the doorway. "Jerry," he said. His voice was still hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. "The profile…clear it with me first. You can use the notes on my computer. I have most of it, I think. You're right. It really isn't…urgent." And that was as much of a concession as they were going to get from him.

"Sure, Mulder," Jerry said easily. "But I really should go." He hovered in the doorway. "Unless you need my help." It was obvious he didn't really want to help. Though if Mulder'd wanted to ask him he would have undoubtedly acted as a human crutch without hesitation to save himself from feeling guilty later.

"I'm walking out of here," Mulder growled. "On my own."

"Have it your way." Jerry managed to waste a few more seconds saying goodbye and hoping that Mulder would feel better soon, plus a few more platitudes that Mulder managed to tune out. Or maybe it was the pain and the return of the buzzing that helped him tune it all out. Well. It didn't matter. The buzzing was receding again.

Dana Scully remained standing, looking down at him. He was having trouble reading her face, which would have concerned him had he not felt so terrible. She smiled after a moment had passed and said, "I know you plan to walk out of here, Mulder, but you're going to have to stand up first."

"Fuck you," Mulder muttered, but there was little anger in it. He was too tired to feel angry anymore, too sick and frustrated at his own body's weakness.

He planted his good hand against the floor and tried to push himself up, but his legs refused to cooperate. Oh, shit. He tried again and this time his emotionless mask slipped and his face scrunched into one of his less attractive grimaces. Finally with a grunt and an attack of vertigo that almost knocked him out again he managed to stand. Scully's face was stamped with pity and he felt a burst of irritation. He nearly overbalanced and toppled over again, but then there were small hands on the small of his back, and on his elbow, steadying him. He didn't move, afraid that if he did his body would give out on him again. But somehow, Scully supporting him. The annoyance dissipated quickly as it was replaced by confusion and wary attention. Why was she doing this? Why, really, was she making such an effort to help him? He couldn't think.

"Are you okay, Mulder?" Scully asked in a low voice. Mulder wrenched himself away from her and managed to stand on his own.

"I'm fine," he said. "Let's go."

They walked down the hallway together. Mulder focused on taking one step at a time. On looking the part of the unflappable crack profiler. Looking downright scruffy in yesterday's rumpled suit with a day's growth of stubble on his clenched jaw. He didn't think he was weaving, but his vision swam occasionally and he lost track of his body for seconds at a time. The persistent thudding in his hand and wrist made him want to scream.

"Mulder, my car is this way," Scully said softly up at him. She was pointed toward an elevator that he thought led to the parking garage.

He didn't speak until he'd folded himself into her passenger seat and adjusted it so that he could stretch his legs. Then he nudged it forward a little bit so that he wasn't quite so far behind Scully. Her seat was probably pushed up as far as it would go so she could reach the pedals.

"So you know Patterson?" he asked.

Scully started the car and took her time in answering. She seemed unsure of herself, of how to answer. "We spoke today," she said.

"And?" Mulder pressed. Scully was hard to read. He thought that maybe she really did believe her story, about time travel and some connection with his sister. But she didn't seem particularly delusional otherwise, and if _Patterson_ trusted her…no, Jerry hadn't said _trusted_. Liked. Patterson liked her.

"With the help of your current partner, I was able to convince him that he could use my help on this case and on others. I know, Mulder, that you don't believe me," she glanced at him as she said this, then past him as she pulled onto the busy street, "but I knew enough about your current case to practically write the profile. Though of course I'm not on this in any real, official capacity," she added.

"Bill would do that," Mulder said savagely. "Put you on the team _unofficially_. And now he'll work you until it kills you. Or at least until the Bureau realizes what he's up to."

His vision blurred again and he was glad he wasn't driving.

"Mulder," Scully said. She used his name a lot and he wondered what that meant but felt too sick to think about it. "I'm here to help you."

Mulder snorted derisively. "Yeah, you've been a great help," he said. Then guilt rushed in to fill the ensuing silence. She had helped him. She was helping him right now. As for her story…

Every profiling instinct he had told him that she was sincere, that she at least believed she was his partner from the future. And as much as he hated to admit it, she knew more about him than your average crackpot would. But it was impossible. This kind of thing only happened in…in the X-files, where his sister's case was resting until he could find enough evidence to pull it out of the unsolved and unsolvable category and into the Bureau mainstream. It wasn't right for it to be there, among ghosts and monsters and things that went bump in the night. She was a kidnap victim, for god's sake, probably either dead by now or escaped and lost and alone in the world, stunted beyond repair. Or maybe she was still locked up somewhere, a ghost of a woman, wishing every day of her life that she could die. If only he hadn't failed her, if only he'd been able to remember enough about that night to find the bastard who did it. If only…

"Mulder," a voice said. Female, no-nonsense attitude, a strangely misplaced tone of affection. Could only be Dana Scully. Mulder opened his eyes, unsure of whether or not he had fallen asleep.

"We're here," Scully said.

"We're…?"

"The hospital."

Mulder looked out the window and the bleak parking lot seemed to corroborate Scully's claim. Damn.

"Can you get out on your own?" Scully asked.

Mulder nodded despite the fact that that simple movement sent stars skidding across his vision. He groped for the door handle and shoved the car door open. Scully was doing the same. Guarding his wrist, he managed to swing himself around so that his feet were touching the ground outside of the car. He was cold.

Scully was in front of him, suddenly, and helped him to stand. He just looked at her. He didn't know what the hell he was supposed to feel about her as she guided him forward. She seemed to know what she was doing, her small hands moving to just the right places to simultaneously keep him from collapsing and usher him toward the ER. He found himself almost enjoying her light touch.

A deep breath coming from somewhere around his left shoulder startled him. Of course, it was Scully. She responded to his gaze by saying, "Mulder, I want to apologize for this morning."

"For what?" he asked, though of course there was only one thing it could be. Maybe now the real story would come out.

"For bringing up your sister. For unloading all of my problems on you without even considering how _you_ might feel or react. For assuming that I knew you."

"Are you expecting me to say it's all okay now?" he asked. "I still don't know what the hell to believe about you."

Scully said nothing, just looked at him.

"At least tell me why you brought up Samantha," he said. It was why they were here now, in any case, and he had a right to know. "Tell me what you know about her."

"To be completely honest, Mulder," Scully began as the automatic doors swished open to allow them entry into the ER, "I don't know what happened. We don't know. We've come across so much contradictory evidence, so many lies, that it's impossible to know what to believe."

"But that means you know something." Mulder felt something like excitement stirring in his stomach. "At least tell me what you've found. If you know anything, tell me." He resented her for a moment for knowing more than he did. He deserved to know _anything _she knew. He could sort through her "lies."

Scully still hadn't said anything by the time they approached the front desk. The ER was bustling, noon on a Thursday in D.C. Scully began to check him in—giving the nurse his information—and he just let her do it. Somehow she knew everything about him and the pain in his wrist was growing again, expanding out from that point in waves that ground his teeth together.

"Sit down," Scully's voice said from somewhere far away. Someone was pushing a chair, a wheelchair, under him and he gave in to his body's desire to collapse.


	6. Chapter 6

"Hey," she said.

Mulder opened his eyes slowly, blinked. There was a lot of white around—white walls, white ceiling, white sheets. Pale blue blanket. Pale gray medical equipment nearby. Dana Scully.

He let his eyes slide shut again. Someone smoothed his hair.

"It's okay, Mulder, go back to sleep."

"Mm," he said. He lifted his eyelids again. There was Scully's face, lit by sunlight streaming in through the window. She was smiling. He resisted the urge to go back to sleep and noted dreamily that he wasn't feeling much pain, or much of anything at all. Oh, he was on the good stuff all right.

There was something he needed to do, though, if only he could remember what it was. He tried for a little while. Nothing was coming to mind.

Scully broke into his thoughts with a now-familiar question. "How are you feeling, Mulder?"

He abandoned his search for that memory and thought about her question. He looked down at his body. The baby blue blanket was pulled up to his chest, though both arms were laying on top of it. One sported a new cast. The other was attached to an IV. He couldn't see his legs but he assumed that they were still there. He licked his lips. "Thirsty," he decided.

Scully seemed ready for that answer, and spooned a few ice chips into his mouth. He felt embarrassed but there wasn't much he could do about it.

"What am I on?" he asked.

"Demerol for the pain," Scully replied, then went on to list a few other things that Mulder tuned out. So he was dehydrated. So he had low blood sugar. Whatever. It was hardly news to him that he was running his body to the ground.

"What happened to my sister?" That at least was something he wanted to know.

Scully seemed taken aback. Then she sighed. "I don't know," she said. "I told you. We don't know."

"Is she dead?"

"Mulder…"

"Fine," he snapped. The pleasantly disconnected feeling he'd awoken to was ebbing away. And while the clarity returning to his thoughts was good he could live without the pain in his arm. He looked at the limb to indicate it and asked, "How bad was it?"

Scully was following his desultory conversation admirably. Almost like she really _was_ used to dealing with him under the influence. "They were able to avoid any serious surgery, but it was…not good, Mulder. You fractured your wrist and one of the bones in your hand. You should have come here right away. There's no telling what damage you caused after the fact or what might have happened had you kept trying to work. You might have lost mobility in the hand for good, developed an infection, or inadvertently hurt someone else. You could have lost your field agent status."

Mulder glared at her. Of course she was right. But coming to the hospital had meant admitting that he had really hurt himself, which made his loss of control with Carrey that much worse. "Are we done with the lecture now?"

Scully briefly closed her eyes at this. "Mulder, if you took care of yourself I wouldn't have to lecture you."

He snorted. "When do I get out of here?"

"That will be up to your doctors. They want to hold you for at least a day, and I don't blame them. Mulder, most people eat, sleep, and drink liquids other than coffee for a reason. You probably would have collapsed even if you hadn't hurt yourself."

Mulder decided to ignore her as long as she kept lecturing him and focused instead on remembering the day's events. The day? He swore softly as he realized that he wasn't sure what day it even was. Had Jerry handed in the profile already? Shit!

"Scully?" he asked.

"Yes," she sighed.

"How long have I been here? Is it still Thursday?"

She nodded. "Yes. It's Thursday."

Mulder took a moment to add this knowledge to his still-blurry mental picture of the world. His arm was starting to throb in earnest. "Has Jerry been by?"

Scully nodded again. "He has."

"Patterson must not be happy, then."

Scully raised her eyebrows at him and folded her arms. "Actually, Agent Patterson was here as well."

"What?" Mulder demanded. He struggled to sit up despite the fact that the movement pulled on his IV and made his wrist pound harder. He winced and filed the pain away for future reference. "Why the hell did no one wake me? Patterson? _Damn_ it."

"No one woke you because you were anesthetized at the time. What did you expect?"

Mulder's answering tone was defeated. "Why was he here?"

Scully hesitated before she spoke. "Go back to sleep, Mulder."

No, fuck you. "Why was Patterson here?"

"He wanted to see how you were doing," Scully said. Mulder waited for more, because he knew there would be more. Bill would never take oh-so-valuable time out of his day just to see how his agent was doing. Not even his spooky prodigy. "He also…he came with a new case. He wants a profile."

"Where's the file?" Mulder asked.

Scully looked tougher than ever. "I told Patterson I'd inform you of the case but I did not agree to put you on as soon as you woke up. It is my opinion as a medical doctor that you are not ready to rush headlong into another case."

"I'm plenty ready," Mulder said harshly. "Did Jerry hand the profile in already? What time is it?"

"It's four thirty," Scully said. "And yes. He did. I believe Patterson thought it was fine."

Mulder swore, wishing he could haul off and punch something again. If Patterson had actually come to his hospital room with a case, it had to be an important one, and the day was already mostly gone. This was bad timing, all of it. He couldn't afford to be hurt and he couldn't possibly deal with the enigma that was Dana Scully and all the questions her presence raised at the same time. He clenched the fingers of his right hand into a fist to remind himself what his temper had already cost him today. When the pain became too much he relaxed his hand. The pain separated into a deep throbbing that made him squirm. Still, he wasn't going to ask for any more medication. He could work through pain but not through an opiate derivative-induced stupor.

"I want the new case file," he said, going for the no-nonsense voice that usually intimidated local police forces and Bureau underlings to do his bidding. "Give it to me or I'll get up and find it myself." The pounding in his hand was driving him crazy. Clenching it had been a stupid idea.

Scully turned an icy glare on him. "You're in no condition to be up and around."

"And you have no right to tell me what to do. Give me the case file." When she didn't do anything more than continue to glare at him Mulder started to sit up. He grimaced as the pain in his arm increased. His head was swimming by the time he was halfway up and he found himself unable to combat the small hands that pushed him back down. He glared at Scully and their eyes met.

After a moment he spoke. Slowly, like he was explaining something to a child. "I want to read the file in my bed. It's not going to hurt me. It _might_ even keep me from going insane in this hellishly uninteresting place and you have no right to keep it from me. I will call Patterson if I have to and let him know just how awake I am right now. Do you understand that?"

She looked at him a moment longer, then sighed. "Yes, Mulder. I understand. I'll get the file."

Mulder was too annoyed to feel like he'd won. "Good," he said curtly.

She swept out of the room a second later.

* * *

><p>March 2, 1989<p>

8:02 PM

"He did what?"

Scully couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so simultaneously pissed off and worried at the same time. Probably another time Mulder had ditched her. But this, this was the most obnoxious sort of ditch because not only would he not get far, but he'd done it in the half-hour she'd left his side to eat dinner. He had to have been planning this for hours, even as he'd pretended that he didn't mind her presence in the room. Damn him.

She breathed in through her nose in an attempt to control her temper. The nurse in front of her was not responsible for her problems, no matter how much she wished the girl had tied Mulder to the bed.

"I'm sorry," the nurse said timidly. Scully vowed silently to tone down her anger when she spoke again. "I would have stopped him if I could have. But we're only able to advise in cases like his, and, well, he decided to go anyway. I'm sorry."

Scully managed a strained smile. "It's not your fault," she said. "I'm just worried."

The nurse returned the smile.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find out where he went."

Scully went into Mulder's room and glanced around, but of course, he'd taken the new case file and the rest of his belongings. Scully shook her head almost imperceptibly, annoyed at herself for giving it to him in the first place.

Well, she thought as she set out to find a pay phone, at least he got seven hours of rest, a cast around his fractured wrist, some food and liquids and enough antibiotics to last until she caught up with him and killed him for being such an incorrigible idiot.

She had a vague idea of what he was working on. He had grudgingly described the new case to her that evening. Murder victims were turning up in pairs, three occasions already, six murders total. Bodies found just outside of three small, rather secluded towns. One pair in New York, another in Pennsylvania, and the other in North Carolina. The only obvious connection between them being that they came in twos and did not exhibit any obvious cause of death. Scully didn't remember it. She hoped that as she learned more, something would catch in her memory and she'd be able to produce those brilliant profiling skills she'd convinced Patterson she had.

But what she needed to figure out now was to which site Mulder was heading, if he'd decided to pursue the case by running after the first lead. He could easily be somewhere else, following up on a hunch or a connection he hadn't seen fit to share with her. She had a sneaking feeling that Bill Patterson would know.

She found a row of pay phones and dialed Patterson's number from the business card he'd given her that morning.

The phone rang. Rang again. A third time. Scully was beginning to wonder if Mulder's boss would pick up at all when the connection clicked to life and a voice said, "Patterson."

Scully cleared her throat and introduced herself. They had spoken a few times this morning, but she was very aware of the fact that he considered her something of an oddity and probably didn't trust her at all. She wouldn't be able to fall into the role of the headstrong agent that she usually practiced with Skinner. Now, she'd have to rely a bit more on tact.

"Hello, Doctor Scully, how are you?" He sounded cordial enough.

"I'm actually at the hospital now, sir," Scully said. "I'm calling because Mulder is gone. He signed himself out against medical advice and gave no indication as to where he was going."

"Where do you think he went?" Patterson asked.

Scully was unprepared for the question. "Well, presumably he's gone to follow up on that case you gave him, sir. Which would put him in Henderson or Renovo or Old Fort. Or possibly somewhere else." She paused. "Given that the earliest murder occurred in Henderson that would be my guess."

"Hm," Patterson said. Scully got the distinct feeling that she was being judged, and it made her skin crawl.

"With all due respect, sir, do you know where he is?"

"Why yes, actually," Patterson said. Scully could hear the smile in his voice, and it made her think of the Grinch making plans to stop Christmas from coming. "He's right here with me. Would you care to join us at the Bureau?"

* * *

><p>Bill Patterson knew that Dr. Scully was annoyed. She was doing an admirable job of controlling her movements and her face was more or less composed, but there was a stiffness about her, a masked irritation that was clearly killing her on the inside. She just wanted to clench her fists and pound on the conference table but, through willpower alone, had folded her hands serenely in her lap.<p>

He still wasn't sure what to think of her. She was a wild card, but she was his wild card and if the profiling abilities she'd demonstrated this morning had been indicative of anything she was brilliant. On par with Mulder, even. Seeing as this case was likely to be a difficult one, he'd be glad for all the firepower he could get.

At the moment, both profilers were silent, waiting for him to begin. He drew out the silence, passing his gaze over each of them in turn. Scully was still pissed. Mulder was rather transparently trying to appear as if he wasn't in pain, his right arm suspended in a navy blue sling. The white plaster that stuck out the end was a sharp contrast against his dark suit. His fingers looked swollen.

The silence lasted a few seconds. Then, unexpectedly, Dana Scully spoke.

"Sir, I appreciate your inviting me to this meeting but before we begin I'd like to make an important point."

"Go right ahead," Patterson said.

Scully swallowed and faced him. "Sir, with all due respect Agent Mulder is not ready to take on this case, or any case. He was not released from the hospital, he signed himself out AMA. And there is absolutely no way that he has been cleared for field duty, seeing as he does not have the function of his right hand. Putting him on this case will endanger Agent Mulder and anyone who works with him."

"No," Mulder said.

Scully quickly spoke over him. "Yes, sir, and I think that you know he won't take it easy, no matter what he says. I think I'm speaking from both experience and common sense—"

"Sir, I am perfectly able to function as a profiler on this case," Mulder said loudly, sitting up straighter in his chair. "I don't know what kind of heroics Miss Scully expects me to pull, but I'm no danger to others. I don't plan to charge in and apprehend the UNSUB single-handedly. All I need to do is…what I always do. You and I both know my limits and we both know that I can go a little farther." He glared at the small woman who sat across from him. "You're right, Scully, I won't 'take it easy.' But I don't need to."

Patterson smiled. He preferred to be in control and needed to get a better handle on the situation right now. "Thank you, both of you," he said wryly. "Of course, if I'd wanted your opinions on this I would have asked you before I assigned you both as consultants to this case."

Scully looked affronted and Mulder glowered.

"Doctor Scully, your medical opinion regarding Agent Mulder will be noted, of course. Agent Mulder, if you fall apart on this case I'll have you confined to the hospital until they decide you're ready to go. Are we clear?"

Neither would be satisfied, but they'd both recognize that fact in each other and feel as if they'd won something. Scully nodded, a sharp, curt nod. Mulder dipped his head down once and brought it up to stare Patterson in the eyes.

"I want you both to visit the crime scenes. Interview whomever you choose. I trust Mulder to know what he's doing, but I expect you, Doctor Scully, to report to both Mulder and me to do whatever Mulder tells you to do. I expect results and if you do not provide me with any," he looked pointedly at Scully, "I will assume that your knowing the killer's profile in this last case means that you were at least in contact with him, if not working directly with him. Is that clear as well?"

Doctor Scully swallowed visibly, but said in a composed voice, "Yes, sir."

"Agent Mulder, we've already discussed the specifics. My team will be investigating this in a more official capacity, but I think you know how much we value your opinion."

Another nod from his agent.

"You're both to leave by nine o'clock tomorrow morning. You'll drive to Renovo. I've already requisitioned you a car."

Neither consultant looked particularly happy, but that was fine. Happy people were too enamored with the world, too secure and confident they'd never be touched by darkness, to do what Mulder and his new partner would have to do.

"You're dismissed."

* * *

><p>"<em>Fuck<em> this."

Mulder was viciously pacing their office, his face contorted into a grimace that revealed pain, frustration, and a couple of other emotions that Jerry didn't even want to think about.

"Mulder, why don't you go home, take a break, do whatever you feel like doing. There's nothing else for you to do here, anyway, and yelling at me isn't going to change Patterson's mind."

"Fuck you, Jerry," Mulder said, but he slowed and stopped to lean against the desk.

"What is it about this case that's bothering you so much? Is it Dana Scully?"

Mulder nodded, then shook his head. Shifted his arm in its sling. "Yes and no," he said. "I don't like her and I don't understand her, which might actually be worse. But this case, Jerry. I don't know where to start. Who to talk to. A four-year-old boy, two girls in their teens, one white, one black, a twenty-three year-old grad student, a forty-year-old plumber, a seventy-five-year-old Chinese woman. One of them was on a road trip, stopped over in Renovo for the night. I've read the case file three times and I can't think of anything. I just…can't…think…of anything."

Jerry wasn't sure how to reply. "I'm sorry, man," he said. "You'll figure it out, though. You always do."

Mulder rubbed his forehead. "Yeah," he said. Jerry would've taken it as a good sign if Mulder hadn't sounded so utterly hopeless.

Bad approach, Jerry supposed. But then broadly placating statements were always a bad approach with his partner, especially when Jerry didn't know if they were true. "Listen, Mulder, if you need anything you give me a call."

"Yeah. I will." These words were accompanied by a snort of laughter and a smirk. Had Jerry not known Mulder so well he might've been offended.

"Of course you will," he said. "Hey, when are you officially back on duty again?"

Mulder shrugged. "Hell if I know. A few weeks, probably."

"Good luck on this case, Mulder."

"Yeah."

* * *

><p>Scully went home and flopped on her couch. She closed her eyes. Today had been insane. Ridiculous. She didn't even want to process everything, because she knew that none of it would make any sense. Hell, she was back in 1989. Working beside young-and-jaded Mulder as a profiling consultant.<p>

Maybe it was best not to think about it at all.

She noticed as she slid her eyes open again that the light was blinking on her answering machine. Well, of course. Trainee Scully didn't have a pocket-sized cell phone in 1989. She hit play.

"Hi Dana, it's Shirley… just wondering where you were today and if you'd like a copy of…" Skip.

The next one nearly knocked her off the couch. "Good evening, Starbuck. Hope you're doing well at the academy. I'm calling because your mother wants to get together for dinner sometime next week…"

Of course. Of course her father was alive. Her whole family. Melissa. Oh, God, and she hadn't even thought of them at all. She'd spent plenty of time thinking about Mulder and work and—as she'd waited long hours in the hospital—worrying about the fact that she couldn't remember her last case except that she'd found _something_ in an autopsy. And how everything had fallen into place a little too easily. Worrying that this was all a dream. But that was all trivial compared to this. God, she could be with them right now, she could be hugging her father for the first time in seven years or laughing with Melissa or even having a good time with Bill before it was all about her work and that sorry-son-of-a-bitch partner of hers. She got up and went directly to her dresser, grabbing all of the birthday cards she'd noticed that morning. She'd seen her parents' and Bill's. And here was Melissa's—on the front a print of a painting of a woman dancing, inside a long note from Melissa that ended with, _Dana, I hope your next year is filled with love and joy_. It read like a Hallmark slogan but Melissa had meant every word of it.

She was filled suddenly with a longing for her sister, for her father, and found herself automatically tamping it down before she realized that she _could_ see at least one of them tonight. And she would.

Her hands trembled as she dialed her parents' number.

"Hello, you've reached the Scully residence, Margaret speaking."

"Mom?" Her voice sounded came out young and hopeful and for once it had nothing to do with her age.

"Hi, Dana, what's going on? Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, Mom, I'm just returning Dad's call. Can I speak to him please?"

"Well, sure…" Her mother sounded a little hurt but after a some scuffling and muted voices on the other end, Scully was on the phone with her father.

"Hi, Starbuck."

"Hi, Dad."


	7. Chapter 7

Mulder took the metro home at ten. He'd spent the last two hours trying to come up with something, any god damn thing, for the case. But he even though he still had nothing, he was exhausted. It had been too many weeks since he'd slept the night through, and today had been something else entirely. He hoped he'd be sharper tomorrow.

He rested his left arm on his knee and stared at the dirty tile of the floor of the subway train as it shook gently back and forth. It was all gray and white, one of those tessellated geometric patterns that no one paid attention to but kids and depressed, exhausted FBI agents who had nothing else to think about but the dismal weight of their own failures.

He'd eschewed the strong pain meds that the hospital pushed at him because he needed to be sharp for this case. He'd never been the biggest fan of pills or needles, anyway. It was enough to know that his hand would still work when it healed and he wouldn't lose his field agent status.

Now, he was alone except for an old man who was reading a newspaper and ignoring him fastidiously in the other corner of the car, and he let his face tighten into a grimace. He liked the lull of a trip home on the metro. There was no need to keep up an image here, no one to impress. No need to be anything but a lonely man counting the tiles on a dirty subway floor. Of course, the fact that that was the highlight of his day would have spoken volumes about his life to anyone who didn't already know how pathetic it was. Not that anyone was asking.

The train screeched to a halt at a dimly lit stop and the old man folded his newspaper and got off. Mulder watched him go, then leaned his head back against the smudged wall behind him. Scully was picking him up and together they'd drive all the way up to Renovo, Pennsylvania.

His wrist hurt. He shifted his arm in the sling but only managed to conclude that there was no comfortable position for it. At least he had relief waiting for him at home in the form of extra-strength Tylenol. Oh, this was the life all right. He only hoped he'd be able to sleep with the pain and the guilt weighing down on him, settling like a heavy fog over whatever peace he'd almost managed to find in the gentle sway of the subway car. He'd been too harried to really process the feeling earlier, but the longer he sat listening to the hum of the train the harder it was to not think about how he'd lost it that morning, how Ed Carrey's face had broken under his hand, how he'd snapped at the every person who'd tried to extend any comfort to him. It was no wonder he was alone, now. He was no better than the boy who'd ordered his sister out of his life sixteen years ago.

He was still thinking about Samantha when the train roared into his station. He glanced up, stood—fought an onslaught of dizziness—and walked out onto the platform.

His apartment was less than ten minutes away, a chilly, solitary walk through mainly silent streets at this hour. He really wasn't in much of a hurry to feel cold again so he lingered a short while on the platform. He wandered over to the lone magazine stand and stared at the bright titles and bold headlines and thought about how people were dying. He glanced over the gum and candy bar selection. It occurred to him that he hadn't eaten anything since he'd forced down half a chicken sandwich at the hospital. He picked up a Snickers and put it down again, then fondled a bag of sunflower seeds, considering. He could always order pizza at home. He decided against it. Really, he just wanted to sleep.

He pulled the bag of seeds awkwardly off its hook and held it up to show the man behind the little counter that he wanted to buy it. He stuck the bag in his coat pocket after he paid and set off toward his apartment.

It had started sleeting sometime after he'd left the Bureau and he was forced to awkwardly zip his overcoat over the sling with his left hand, holding his briefcase in two fingers or the crook of his arm. The movement was jarring and the heavy case slammed against his cast. By the time he was done he was gasping with pain and hardly two blocks from his apartment. A real waste of effort. He should have thought of doing it before he left the station.

His block was deathly quiet, and something about the stillness set him immediately on edge. He forgot his discomfort for a moment as he strained his senses to pick up what was wrong. For a moment he felt certain he was being watched or followed and undid all of his coat-zipping effort in one quick movement to better reach his weapon. Then he remembered he was a terrible shot with his left hand. He stood at the foot of the stairs leading to his door, and waited, neck hairs prickling, senses attuned to the silence of the night.

Nothing.

After a few uneventful seconds passed he climbed the steps and let himself in. He was getting paranoid. Who the hell would follow him anyway? By any official account he was between cases, and he hadn't recently pissed off anyone who wasn't now in custody. He exhaled a sharp bark of self-deprecating laughter in the solitude of his hallway. His problem with the street was that it had been too silent. Too peaceful. Sometimes it was easy to forget that most of the world didn't deal in blood and gore and twisted little bodies.

He opened his door, flicked on a light and glanced around, taking in the stale yet rumpled appearance of a home rarely lived in. He hadn't made it home last night and the night before he'd crashed on the couch for two hours before dreams of gutted children had awoken him and sent him on an early-morning run that lasted almost as long as he'd slept. No wonder he was exhausted now. He dumped his briefcase on the floor and stumbled over to the couch, sitting heavily. Now he could relax. He groaned. He grimaced. He lay back and clutched his arm to his chest. It felt good to be away from work, away from Patterson, away from people he had to impress by being unruffled and unruffle-able, all the time, no matter how much he sometimes wanted to scream his lungs out.

His wrist was hurting with a piercing pain that made him sit up again. It was time to find some Tylenol, take twice what he should and sleep for as long as his subconscious would allow him. Tonight, with his attack on Ed and Samantha and Dana Scully and the new case on his mind, he wasn't exactly hopeful.

His coat pocket crinkled as he pushed himself off the couch and he remembered his seeds. He couldn't quite muster up any sort of hunger but he thought he might as well eat them. Along with the water and pain medication he could almost pretend it was a real meal. Three main food groups. Seeds, liquid, relief. It was all anybody needed, really. He opened a dusty cabinet above his sink and pulled out a little white bottle. He shook it and the clatter of pain pills against plastic was music to his ears.

It was when he couldn't open it that his resolve crumpled. The safety lid was made for people with two good hands and his left hand and fingers, clumsy with exhaustion, just didn't cut it. His right hand was useless, the fingers too painful for grasping. He fumbled with the lid, bashed it against the counter, tried to cut the damn thing off, and couldn't get it to do anything but jiggle in a taunting circle.

He let out a primal grunt and hurled the bottle against the wall. It hit with a little anticlimactic clatter and fell to the couch where it bounced once and then lay still. All the events of the day came rushing back to him and of course there could be no relief.

He fell back against the counter, sobbing and doubling over, not quite sure why but unable to stop his chest from heaving, his legs from caving so that he slid down to the floor. He was alone. He hated his life, he hated himself and he hated the little white bottle of useless pills that had rolled to a stop where two of his couch cushions met. He had failed his sister and ruined his case and his arm and it hurt and now that he had a chance to do better he had no fucking idea where to start and more people were going to die because he just couldn't handle it anymore. He buried his face in his good hand and let himself cry.

A familiar noise made him jump before he even registered what was. A knock on the door. Someone was outside and wanted to come in. He closed his eyes and rested his head on his knee. If he ignored them, they'd go away. If he could strangle his crying enough they wouldn't hear him, wouldn't think anybody was home. He was never home and anyway, he'd learned to cry silently a long time ago. He couldn't deal with this now.

The knocking persisted.

Shit. He forced himself to stop, to hold the sobs in until the tears dried up. Better not be Dana Scully at the door, he thought savagely. He still hadn't found the strength to move.

He took a few steadying breaths, aware that no matter what he did now he'd look and sound like shit when he opened the door. Whoever it was would just have to deal. He got up and splashed water from the tap over his face and dried off with a dish towel. Then he made sure he could reach his gun with his left hand and approached the door. He sobbed again involuntarily, once, a remnant of his breakdown, and peered through the peephole.

A tall black man stood impatiently, an imposing pillar in a long dark trench coat, conspicuous in Mulder's hallway. After a few seconds had passed he knocked again. "Agent Mulder," he said, "I know you're there."

What the hell?

Mulder swung the door open, swallowed, and demanded in a voice that was still thick with tears, "Who are you?" His breath hitched in his chest and he felt a wave of self-revulsion. Get it together, Fox, you're embarrassing yourself.

"Who I am is unimportant," the man stated. He made no move to explain further.

Mulder started to take a deep breath, but stopped when it shuddered too much in his chest. "Why are you here?"

"I must warn you to proceed with extreme caution in your upcoming case, Agent Mulder. And when you find nothing, I advise you to forget you were ever involved. You and Dr. Scully may both be in danger."

Mulder stood taller as anger stirred in him again, and stepped forward into the doorway. He was getting tired of total strangers knowing everything about him, speaking in riddles and vague half-statements. He rested his hand on his weapon, stared the larger man in the face. "Tell me who you are and what you're doing here now or get the fuck out of my apartment."

The man seemed unfazed. "There is more to your new case than meets the eye, Agent Mulder, and I intend to help you when it is convenient for me. I will find you. And I suggest that you speak to your father."

"I don't speak to my father," Mulder snarled, stepped back and slammed the door in the man's face. He felt a new volley of tears rise up in him and he staggered back, biting down on a sob. When he stepped forward to lock the door again he saw through the peephole that the man had already gone.

He sunk down against the door this time. The man was another Dana Scully, and if that wasn't the last thing in the world he needed he didn't know what was. He couldn't fathom the man's agenda or motive or why on earth he'd say _speak to your father_.

Knocking sounded again from just a few feet above his head, rattling the door behind him, and he jerked and cursed aloud. If that man had come back... He forced himself to stand and peered through the peephole a second time.

It wasn't the man. It was Dana Scully.

If he ignored her, she'd have to go away. This wasn't her apartment, this wasn't her life, and she had no right to be here. She knocked again, a little more softly. Doubting herself, hopefully. Go on, Scully. Keep doubting. Doubt your little self all the way down the hall and into the elevator and back to wherever the hell you came from.

She knocked again.

Mulder took a few steadying breaths, wiped his face, and tried to compose himself. A few more deep inhale-exhales. He ran his hand through his hair.

She knocked a fourth time. Did the woman never give up?

Mulder swung the door open and stared wildly at her. "Leave me alone," he growled.

"Oh, Mulder," she said.

His fist clenched around the door handle. He just had to hold it together long enough to get her to leave. "Scully, get out of my doorway and go _home_. Go anywhere. Whatever you want, I can't help you."

"No," Scully decided, shouldering carefully past him. She looked up at him from his living room as if she owned the place. "You're hurt, Mulder. You're alone, and in pain, and I just want to… to make sure you have everything you need. I'm worried about you." She stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out a little blister pack of Tylenol. "Here," she said, "I picked it up on my way here. I know you don't always have any in your apartment."

He felt his composure begin to disintegrate again as he accepted the medication. He ended up biting his lip for a few long seconds.

"Scully, I don't want you here," he said finally. He knew even before he opened his mouth that he was losing the fight. Somehow, Dana Scully was here to stay.

"I know," Scully said. She glanced at the still-open door.

Mulder rubbed his forehead, then took a deep breath. A little shudder left over from his sobbing fit surprised him. Scully wasn't leaving and…somehow, he didn't quite mind. He was tired, his arm hurt, he had a lot to do tomorrow and a lot to digest concerning the man who'd come to the door. He shouldn't want her here. But damn it, he wanted some of her kindness. She had done nothing but care for him and honestly seemed to care _about_ him since she'd appeared in his life with her crazy stories and even though she was a complete stranger, and in all likelihood out of her mind, she was the best he had. Mulder took another deep breath and reached out to close the door softly behind her.

He held up the little pack of Tylenol and started moving back toward the kitchen. "I just need to…I…take these," he muttered in explanation. Scully didn't ask for more, but followed him into his tiny unused kitchen, hovering staunchly by his elbow. She watched as he filled a glass with tap water, popped two pills from their plastic domes and downed them together. He might've taken more if he was alone, but these were extra-strength anyway and he didn't want a doctor on his back about it.

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Then, looking around at the empty sink and counters, and the lack of anything edible in sight, Scully asked, "Have you eaten?"

Mulder smirked humorlessly. "I thought you knew everything about me," he said.

Somehow Scully took that as an invitation to start opening cabinets and drawers. "Mulder, you need to eat," she said.

"I guess I do," he said, not quite on board with this new development but aware that there didn't seem to be any stopping it. "I think there are a couple of cans of soup in that one by the stove."

Scully followed his direction and came up with a can of Campbell's. Then she found a pot easily—naturally, like she knew where it would be—set it on the stove and poured the can into it.

Mulder leaned against the counter again as she peered at the can and fiddled with the dials on the stove. "So," he said in a conversational tone, "Why are you really here?"

Scully looked up for just a moment, then back down again. "Because I realized," she began evenly, speaking to the pot of soup, "that even if you have no feelings for me, you mean more to me than anyone else in this world. Even my father, Mulder, and in my life he passed away more than six years ago. I spent tonight with him and somehow, I couldn't stop thinking about how you were still alone. I know that I can't convince you of my sincerity with words alone and that my motives must seem strange to you. I'm sorry. I only want..." she paused, for a moment, and her next words were throaty with emotion Mulder couldn't quite understand. "I'm glad you let me in, Mulder."

"Well, it's not like you gave me much of a choice," he pointed out, but there was little venom in his voice. The woman was making him soup, for God's sake. "I had another visitor tonight," he said. "Just before you. He warned me to stay away from this case."

"What?" She sounded surprised at the sudden change of subject, but her tone was sharp as if the information meant something to her. "Who was he? What did he say?"

Glad to be talking business instead of his feelings or hers or about whatever relationship Scully thought they'd had, he described the man and paraphrased their conversation. Scully listened with arms folded.

"I know that man," she said slowly when Mulder had finished. "He works for our government. High up, too. I could tell you more, but I don't know how much I should…" She trailed off, but her expression was serious. "If he says we're in danger, we may very well be. He's come to us before and never without reason."

Of course, Mulder thought. Because really, this day wouldn't be complete without an appearance from a man who not only knew too much about him but was involved in funny business in the future with his X-files partner too. Of course, the man's connection to Scully wasn't all that was strange.

He took a deep breath. "Hey Scully, what do you know about my father?"

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><p>Reviews are always appreciated!<p> 


	8. Chapter 8

_Note: As I've been editing and rereading, I've had a few thoughts I probably should have included in an author's note in the beginning. ...But since I didn't:_

_This story is definitely not an accurate depiction of the FBI. Or profiling. Or possibly the 80s. But I've tried to keep it as true to the show as possible. If you notice anything that seems off, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix it!_

_I have the major plot outlined now, though I didn't when I first started writing this in 2007ish. There will be elements of MSR, but that won't be the main focus of the story. I'm more interested in writing how their relationship changes in general, and of course in Mulder's case and getting Scully back to her own time (and in the connection between the two...which is coming!).  
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_Also, a huge thanks to everyone who has already reviewed or favorited. Your feedback is very helpful and motivates me to keep adding to and thinking about this story._

_Now without further ado...  
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><p>11:31 PM<p>

Scully looked down into the chicken noodle soup that was beginning to simmer on Mulder's disused stove. She considered all of the possible answers to that question and decided to see where Mulder was going with it instead. "Your father, Mulder?"

"Yes, my father," he said, perhaps a touch impatiently. "Just what information has my future self deigned to volunteer about the Mulder patriarch?"

She wondered why Mulder felt the need to quiz her on things that he knew better himself. _What do you know about bugs, Scully_ At least this was classic Mulder, strangely comforting in its familiarity. Almost as if it were proof that her Mulder was in there somewhere, waiting behind the pain, the exhaustion, and the anger. Scully sighed. "I know that your father worked for the State Department. I know that you weren't close."

"That's it?" Mulder prompted. He was looking at her intently.

I know he gave your sister away. I know he sold out to the dark side and conspired with the very men you've spent your career trying to bring to heel. I know he let you blame yourself for your sister's disappearance and for how your family fell apart. I know he didn't like you much. (Not that Mulder ever said so in so many words.) Of course, she knew also that Mulder would drop whatever he was doing and drive through the night to see his father if only the older man would make the call. And, drugged as he'd been, Bill Mulder's death had been devastating to him. But there was no way she could say all that without having to explain so much more, or making Mulder uncomfortable or too angry to placate. We don't talk about this, Mulder. It's just not what we do.

"Is there something else I should know?" Scully asked.

Mulder laughed. A single _ha_. "I guess you've got the basic facts," he said. "Scully, I've spoken to my father twice in the last ten years, and I sure as hell don't plan to start now. Assuming you're really my partner from the future, I'm guessing you know more than you're telling me." Scully nodded. "Yes. Good. Then maybe you even know why." His entire demeanor changed again and he slumped so that the counter behind him took even more of his weight. He needed to sit. Scully made mental plans to move them into the living room. "I'm so tired," Mulder went on. "I just don't know what to make of this. Of this man, of this connection to my father, of you."

The soup was ready. Scully pulled a bowl out of one of the cabinets, then picked up the pot and poured most of it in there. "Soup's ready," she said unnecessarily. "Let's sit in the living room."

Maybe Mulder thought it was a good idea. Maybe he just didn't have the strength to argue. Mulder settled onto the couch, then accepted the bowl of soup with a short "thanks" and set it on the coffee table where he could reach it easily with one hand.

A muted clatter caught Scully's attention as she took a seat next to Mulder, and she found a bottle of Tylenol trying wedged between two cushions. She pulled it out and set on the coffee table. "I guess you do have some," she shrugged.

Mulder closed his eyes as if her observation pained him.

The reaction was unexpected enough that all of a sudden Scully found herself doubting her reasons for coming to Mulder's apartment. Wondering whether or not she even had reasons. There was nothing about her current situation that made sense, really, when she stopped and considered it seriously for even a moment. She had accepted too quickly and too easily that everything had just fallen into place. How had she convinced Lamana? Patterson? It made no sense that either would have accepted that she knew so much about the case, let alone that they had pulled her straight out of the academy and made her Mulder's partner with hardly any reservations. It didn't make sense at all.

What if this wasn't real?

Mulder slurped his soup loudly on the other end of the couch.

Maybe she was dreaming. Scully forced herself to breathe deeply and leaned back against the leather couch. It was difficult to imagine she could be dreaming with this level of detail. She'd hardly remembered what Jerry Lamana looked like, let alone his mannerisms, and though Bill Patterson was a harder man to forget he had hardly seemed a figment of her imagination when she'd met with him earlier today. But of course, that could mean nothing. Dreams almost always had an internal logic that the dreamer rarely thought to question. She remembered the time that Mulder had been pulled from the tropical ocean convinced he'd been immersed in World War II, where all of the faces were familiar and she had punched him on the jaw. Maybe soon she too would wake up insisting to her partner that she'd just been making him soup in 1989.

She looked at the Mulder sitting on the couch beside her, as if some clue as to his existence might be found in the lines of his pale, hunched form. He noticed her attention and met her eyes. "Are you okay?" he asked gently.

"I'm fine," Scully replied automatically, flustered by the question. She didn't want him intruding in her fears. She was afraid to let him in, as afraid as she'd been to let Mulder in to her doubts and worries even after they'd been partnered together for years. She was also afraid that if he took on any more he would crack. He was closer to the edge now than her Mulder had ever been. No, that didn't make any sense. This was her Mulder. If he was even real.

She had a very strong urge to crawl into bed and not get out until all of this was over.

"Are you planning on staying until I'm tucked in under my covers?" Mulder asked. He pushed the empty soup bowl back on the coffee table and leaned his head against the couch back, closing his eyes lazily. "Because I hate to burst your bubble, Doctor Scully, but you're sitting on my bed right now." A small smile came to his face, though his eyes remained closed. "Unless of course you had something else in mind…"

Scully just looked at him.

He turned serious a moment later and opened his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. "That was out of line. Shouldn't joke about that sort of thing." His eyes slid shut again. "Though you were pretty forward in inviting yourself into my apartment."

Scully couldn't bring herself to pay her full attention to him, even though he was finally acting normal around her. Joking like he might on any day. Because he couldn't be real. This had to be a dream. She had been stupid not to see it before.

Except that if this was a dream, it wasn't a normal one. So far, everything had progressed more or less logically. Nothing around her had the fuzzy dreamlike quality of being strange without seeming to—just for her presence here. She found it strange enough, though, and clearly, so did Mulder. And maybe Patterson really had been impressed. Maybe Jerry Lamana really did believe her. Maybe he just liked her.

Make up your mind, she told herself irritably. Either it's a dream or it isn't.

She remembered being caught in that mushroom mountain and hallucinating all sorts of things. But there had been hints then that all was not right, lapses in time and logic that she'd been unable to explain. Nor could she remember feeling any pain, even after she and Mulder had clawed their way from one level of the dream to another. In the past day, though, she'd felt a normal range of sensations: cold, warmth, hunger, thirst, tiredness, and even pain when she'd banged her knee on the table in Mulder's hospital room. But if this wasn't a dream…

She realized that Mulder was staring intently at her. She offered a little smile that she didn't feel at all, and was about to ask Mulder if he needed anything else, but he spoke first.

"Scully, what are you doing here? Really?"

"I…" Scully began, and felt the weirdness of the day closing in on her. The man in front of her certainly didn't seem like a dream. "I don't know," she said, though she was aware he'd asked the same question of her not long ago, and she'd responded easily then. "I have nowhere else to be. You're my only link to the future, Mulder. I know you don't believe me, but, but…" she was slipping, losing the calmness that had been inexplicably hers all day. "I'm afraid," she said. "I don't know what to do and I don't know how to get back. I don't even know if any of this is _real_." She stared at a spot on the coffee table, trying to hold her emotions in check despite the tears pricking at her eyes. She didn't want to do this in front of Mulder. She didn't want to do this at all.

Mulder moved toward her, sliding across the couch. He looked like he wanted to comfort her somehow, and Scully immediately felt a pang of guilt. He was the one who needed comforting, after all. He was the one who'd been crying before she came in, who'd spent the day in the hospital and the night in the office.

He rubbed a small awkward circle over her shoulder blade with his left hand. "Are you okay?" he was asking. "Are you going to be okay?" He'd never been able to resist a damsel in distress.

"I'm fine," she said again, pulling away from his touch even though she craved it. As though she could melt into his arms and let her troubles drift away. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come here and…and do that."

He withdrew his hand and scrubbed his face for a moment, then let the hand drop and sighed slowly. "It's okay," he said. "I think…I know you're telling the truth. I'm just not sure I believe the truth." His words were starting to slur with tiredness and she wondered if he really knew what he was saying.

In any case, he was wrong. It wasn't okay. "No, Mulder," she said. "I shouldn't have come here."

"Don't bother," he interrupted lazily. "I'd be having a worse night than this if you hadn't come. I mean, soup, come on." Oblivious to her raised eyebrow, he went on in the same dreamy tone. "I'm the one who should apologize to you. You've been nothing but good to me since you came here and I've been nothing but an ass to you in return. I don't know why you think I deserve your kindness, because I don't, but I appreciate it. I really do. I'm sorry for yelling at you…" His head tipped back against the cushion and then came back, as if in slow motion. "I'm so tired, Scully…"

"I know, Mulder."

"Seeds in my pocket," he mumbled.

Whatever _that_ meant.

Scully watched him fall asleep. She glanced at her watch. It was only 11:55.

In that moment she felt strangely content. Nothing had been clarified, and she'd no more answers now than she'd had before. She was no closer to getting home. But… Mulder accepted her. She hadn't even realized how much of her stress had stemmed from his rejection of her. Relief was what she was feeling.

She sighed and stood up as carefully as she could from the couch so as not to wake her now-slumbering partner. "Come on, Mulder, let's get you comfortable," she muttered. He was still sitting up, his head lolled back at an awkward angle and protruding legs crossed at the ankles. He was still wearing his overcoat.

Scully watched him for a few moments, half-expecting him to open his eyes and demand to know why she was staring at him. He looked ridiculously young. Smoothed out in sleep his face was not that of Spooky, the tortured profiler who had seen too much, but that of a lost boy. God, he was only twenty-seven.

She leaned over him and lightly brushed his hair back from his face. He didn't move. She brought her fingers down, slightly, and caressed the bruise that she had noticed that morning darkening the skin just below his eye. She was struck again by the hollowness of his cheeks, the paleness of his skin. His skull seemed like it was too big for his skinny neck.

In his sleep he made a little noise like "mm" and shifted slightly. Scully pulled back quickly, startled. If he woke up to find her stroking his face he'd…well, she wasn't exactly sure what he'd do. But she doubted he'd return the sentiment.

She focused on getting him into a reclining position on the couch. She decided after a few moments of consideration that if she could just lift his legs up to the cushions, the rest of his body would fall into place without sliding off the couch. She hoped.

Feeling oddly self-conscious, she bent over and curled her hands around Mulder's ankles. With a slight grunt she managed to swing his long legs onto the couch. Mulder didn't even stir. She went about trying to sort him out while he slept, draping his left arm over his stomach and smoothing out his coat. She heard something crinkle and, after a moment of deliberation, stuck her hand in his pocket. She pulled out a bag of sunflower seeds. Of course. She put them on the coffee table so that he might see them in the morning. She even found a blanket in a hall closet and draped it over his sleeping form.

She stepped back to admire her handiwork and studied him for a little while longer. She didn't want to leave him just yet. Maybe it was her own desire for company. Or maybe she really did want to make sure he didn't wake up and need anything else. She wouldn't stay all night, of course, since despite the fact that he trusted her enough to fall asleep Mulder still considered her a stranger. But another hour or two might be a good thing. Just to make sure he'd be okay. Of course it was right.

Her course of action decided, she pulled the chair away from Mulder's desk and positioned it so that it faced him. She turned off the lights before settling into it, then glanced at her watch again in the scant light coming in from the window. It was 12:02 AM.

She supposed it was strange that she was sitting here, watching Mulder sleep. But really, it was no stranger than anything else that had happened today. Mulder was breathing easily, steadily, in and out, in and out. It was the only sound in his apartment. This Mulder didn't even have a fish tank. Scully felt the seconds slipping quietly by to the steady rhythm of Mulder's breathing. She let her head rest on the back of the chair and closed her eyes.

Just for a minute. She wouldn't sleep. Just rest her eyes for a moment. It had been a long day, after all…

She woke abruptly to a loud yell and jerked for a gun that wasn't there. It was Mulder. He had sat up straight with his eyes wide open and was fighting with his sling, thrashing with his free arm. He was obviously still asleep.

Scully jumped up and ran to his side, repeating his name in a low tone. She put her hands on his shoulders. She'd experienced his nightmares a few times before, usually through hotel rooms with connecting doors…and a few times at his apartment or hers. She could usually calm him if she stayed close to him long enough.

"GET AWAY FROM ME!" he yelled, and shoved her back with surprising strength. She tripped over the coffee table and fell flat on her ass.

"Mulder!" she snapped.

When she managed to struggle back to her feet, Mulder was silent and blinking owlishly, pressing his left hand to his temple. His young face was tight with pain.

"What…?" he asked hesitantly when he saw her.

"It was a nightmare, Mulder," she said harshly. She took a deep breath and continued in a gentler voice, "Are you all right?"

He nodded, massaged his forehead for a moment, then dropped his hand. "What are you still doing here?"

"I fell asleep," she admitted. It was 3:13 AM. "Well, since I'm here, do you need anything?"

He at least seemed resigned to the fact that she was in his apartment and wasn't actively trying to make her leave. Actually, he wasn't doing much of anything. Scully realized that he was probably still half in his dream, trying to sort it out from reality. It had been a long time since she'd heard him scream so loudly, and he'd never thrown her back or even touched her while coming out of a nightmare. Another difference between this Mulder and hers, she supposed.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked.

He must have just registered the fact that she'd been on the floor when he finally awoke. "I'm fine," Scully said. To be perfectly honest her tailbone was aching, but Mulder didn't need to know that. He was undoubtedly in sadder shape. He was still making his worst in-pain face.

He nodded vacantly at her assurance.

The adrenaline that had come with her rude awakening was beginning to fade, and Scully felt suddenly drained. "Can I get you anything?" she asked again.

Mulder hesitated.

"Really, Mulder, it's not a problem."

He nodded again. "I guess…" he began. His voice was small and reminded Scully again of how young he was. Like he was a little boy asking if he could have another cookie, maybe? "If you could open that bottle of Tylenol I guess I could use some more." He gestured with a movement of his head to the little white container on the coffee table. It had fallen onto its side and rolled toward the edge as Scully tripped over the table.

Scully answered him by picking it up and easily twisting the cap off. She tipped two into her hand and dropped them into his waiting palm. She was about to get him a glass of water when he popped both in his mouth and swallowed them dry.

"Thanks," he said.

Scully smiled kindly. "Don't mention it." Then she remembered, so fully that she felt stupid for ever forgetting, that he'd checked himself out of the hospital AMA less than eight hours ago. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

He shook his head slightly and didn't answer her question. "I'm sorry you had to see that," he said. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"Mulder, drop it," Scully said with more force than she'd meant to. Still. It was late and she didn't want to deal with his guilt. The worst was over, and nothing had come of it. There was no reason to dwell.

Of course, she'd never really resolved her frustration over his tendency to act as though the world revolved around him and he were to blame for all its problems. Sure, it was her life but it was his…whatever. "You were hospitalized today. Will you be okay or should I drive you back to the hospital?"

"I need to use the bathroom," he said, getting up and shedding the overcoat he'd fallen asleep in. He shivered visibly for a moment. "And I'm going to change while I'm at it."

"Mulder."

He turned around and looked squarely at her. "Look, Dr. Scully, I'm tired and I don't want to deal with all of this crap now. I'm not going back to the hospital and I'm not going to let you trick me into saying something you can use to keep me from visiting that crime scene tomorrow. I don't know what you're still doing here. If you want to drive home, go ahead. I'll be fine. If not there's a bed in that room that I haven't used in about a year and a half and if you can clear it off it's all yours." He turned again and headed toward the bathroom. "Good night."


	9. Chapter 9

Scully fell asleep in Mulder's bed, thinking about all of the things she hadn't thought to say or ask. Like what his nightmare had been about. Like, why don't you take the bed, Mulder. She should have explained that Mr. X's appearance meant that this case was related, somehow, to the X-Files or an extensive government conspiracy. She should have insisted upon checking him out before he went back to sleep. He hadn't even denied that he was hurting, just deflected the question and run away. Typical Mulder, she supposed.

There had been an alarm clock amidst the junk that cluttered Mulder's bedroom, and Scully had plugged it in and set it to 5:30. This way she'd have enough time to drive to her apartment, make herself presentable, gather the bag she'd packed before coming over here, and be back here around quarter to eight. Enough time then to help Mulder with whatever he needed, go over their directions once more, and address any other new case odds and ends that might crop up.

Go to sleep, she ordered herself a little desperately as the numbers on the alarm clock blinked to 3:47. Less than two hours before you have to get up again.

She slept.

When she finally managed to drag herself out of bed at five thirty, she felt utterly limp. She'd need coffee to feel even remotely human. Maybe she could pick some up for the both of them on her way back to Mulder's. He'd been up a good part of the night too, and she knew he never rested well after a bad nightmare. She shrugged on her jacket, slipped her feet into her heels, and stepped into the main room quietly so as to not wake her partner on the couch.

Only, Mulder wasn't on the couch. He wasn't in the living room at all, in fact, nor was he in the kitchen or the bathroom. Shit! She glanced around the living room again, just in case he'd left a note. Which, of course, he hadn't. Scully sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of her nose. Maybe he'd gone running. The closet was open and she didn't see his running shoes, in any case.

She glanced at her watch. It was nearly 5:40. If she wanted to get ready in time she'd have to leave now and trust Mulder to take care of himself wherever he was. She stood in the middle of the living room for a moment of indecision before walking out and shutting the door behind her. He'd managed for twenty-seven years, more or less. Why should today be any different?

A creeping sense of guilt came over her as she drove home and intensified the more she thought. What if he'd left this morning because she was in the apartment? Maybe otherwise he'd still be fast asleep on his couch, getting the rest he so desperately needed. He was in no shape to be running. At best, he'd be hurting, and at worst…

She made it home and went through her morning routine as fast as she could. She found what she thought was her least ugly pants suit combo and made a serious, if short-lived attempt, at making her hair look slightly less frumpy. Given the state Mulder had been in yesterday it wasn't hard to imagine any number of scenarios involving him passed out or re-injured somewhere. She tried to convince herself that he knew his limitations but from what she'd seen so far, he didn't. She packed a first-aid kid, just in case.

She was back in the car and driving to his apartment a half hour later. She felt ten times more keyed up than she'd been leaving. Every red light took an hour. Every green light was choked with dozens of slowly accelerating cars whose drivers just didn't care if Mulder was okay or not.

When she got to his apartment it was seven-forty. She parked sloppily, practically jumped out of her car and bounded up into his building.

She pounded on the door to his apartment and it swung open. Mulder was standing behind it, looking freshly showered and clean in a white button-down shirt and dark grey slacks. His hair was tousled slightly and he was still in his socks. He wasn't wearing his sling and he held his arm close to his chest.

"Hey," he said, opening the door wider. "I'll be ready in a few minutes."

Scully entered and sank down on Mulder's couch. "Where were you?" she demanded.

"Is everything okay?" he asked.

"Yes, yes," Scully disregarded his question and focused on him again. He had picked up a matching gray suit jacket and was pulling it on with a look of intense concentration. "This morning, Mulder. Where were you?"

"Oh," he said, though of course he'd known what she was talking about. "I went out."

"Out?"

"Just—hang on," he said. He was trying to button his jacket with one hand. Scully realized with a new surge of guilt his expression was less one of concentration and more one of pain. She went to help him.

"I got it," he snapped when she tried to do one of his buttons, and moved away from her. It was yet another little reminder that all was not normal. Her Mulder would accept the help with a little smirk and a crack about how she did everything around here. She pursed her lips and stepped back, giving him the space he obviously wanted.

"Mulder…" she began.

He turned on her like he had the morning before. "Don't 'Mulder' me," he said. "I'm putting up with you and what the hell, I might even like you, but this is my life and I don't have to answer to you about everything and if I want to put my jacket on myself that's my own damn business."

Scully nodded silently. "Okay," she said finally.

"Yeah," he said harshly. "It's okay."

Scully waited quietly as Mulder finished put on his shoes and disappeared into the bathroom to fix his hair. He was clearly straining to do everything one-handedly, and Scully resisted the urge to offer to open the Tylenol bottle for him again. Some righteous and insulted voice inside of her told her not to. If he wanted some, he could ask. That was what he got for snapping at her when she tried to help.

She closed her eyes, disgusted at her own childishness. Really, she should just wait until there was a good opportunity, one not likely to annoy him further. It wouldn't do to have him take her head off on their very first day of work together.

It occurred to her as he was settling into the passenger seat beside her and awkwardly pulling the door shut with his left hand that he was probably embarrassed by the previous night. She was allowed to be her Mulder's protector because she was his partner, his one in five billion, the only one he trusted. And so on. To this man she was nothing but a green almost-agent assigned to work with him, a stranger, and Mulder did not let strangers see his pain. She'd seen it a hundred times before. He'd worked through the bruises and illnesses and broken bones and gunshot wounds and headaches that came from chasing aliens and ghosts and government conspiracies for a living. He'd joke with Bureau nobodies through the pain of migraines, then as soon as he sauntered down to the basement office turn all off the lights and hunch over in his chair, pressing his head between his hands with his eyes squeezed tightly closed until the worst of it was over. And he always insisted on coming back to work too soon.

She pulled the car away from his apartment building and drove them to the nearest coffee shop. First things first. She still needed that coffee, and decided that they could both use some breakfast. Neither of them said anything until they were standing in line.

"Mulder, get a bagel or something."

He glared at her. "Ooh, are you buying? Or should we go double Dutch?"

"You need to eat."

He gestured for her to order first when they reached the front of the line. She lost a short staring contest and bought a large coffee and a buttery croissant—might as well take advantage of that twenty-five year old metabolism while she had it. She decided that ordering for Mulder might just make him snap and moved away to pour cream into her coffee. She doubted he'd actually order a bagel as suggested, but he liked muffins and sometimes came into work with a latte for her in one hand and a piece of coffee cake in the other.

She looked up from her cup to see him walking toward the door, holding a large cup of black coffee in his left hand and nothing else. Damn it. She considered waiting in line again to buy him that bagel, but decided it would take too long. He probably wouldn't eat it anyway. Instead she resolved to stop at every rest station along the way until he got something that had actual calories.

When she returned to the car, she found him sitting in the passenger's seat, sipping his coffee. "What took you so long?" he quipped.

She started the car and drove on, too frustrated to even enjoy her pastry. She was worried about Mulder, and annoyed at him, and curious about his morning exploits. There was also a lot she needed to talk to him about and she had no real idea where to begin. The longer she sat in silence the more irritated she grew with herself.

She glanced over at Mulder and saw that he was pulling out a couple of case files and a legal pad and pen. He managed to balance all of them on his lap and began to take sloppy notes with his left hand. His face was set, emotionless.

"Mulder," she said.

"What." He didn't look up.

Pick a topic, Dana. And pick it now. "That man who came to your apartment last night… I know who he is."

"Is he from the future, too?" Mulder asked. "I know. High up government official, right? You said so last night. I'm trying to get some work done."

"Don't you think this might help?" Scully asked. "If he's involved, there's a good chance that this is more than your garden variety serial killer."

She glanced at Mulder again and saw that he was staring at her.

"What the hell would you know about garden variety serial killers?" There was an edge to his voice that scared her.

She formed her answer carefully and stared ahead into the road, thinking about Luther Lee Boggs and Donnie Pfaster and John Mostow. "I don't pretend to know as much as you, Mulder. I never have. But I have been involved in serial cases and I know what goes into finding these killers…and I've seen you profile. I know now you need all of the information I can give you."

"Fine then, Scully," he said dangerously. "Enlighten me."

Scully took a deep, cleansing breath, and told him everything.

* * *

><p>March 3, 1989<p>

9:40 AM

They were stopping again, this time at a truck stop in Bumfuck Nowhere, Maryland. Scully had spent the last hour and twenty minutes telling him stories that he found more and more difficult to disbelieve. She had begun by describing "their" work. He'd laughed at first when she said that he'd voluntarily left the BSU for the dusty cabinets of X-files sitting in the copier room. Mulder had little patience and less love for the X-files. He'd reopened Samantha's case as an X-file in hopes of finding some answers, making it an active case again in the Bureau mainstream. But nothing had come of it and so it was languishing instead among stories of Bigfoot and Elvis sightings and things that went bump in the night.

Then, Scully told him that he believed his sister had been abducted by aliens.

This threw him for a loop. Because, oh, he had.

For years after Samantha's abduction Fox had been sure of it. He'd seen the bright light, felt the house shake, watched her float away on invisible strings. It wasn't until he'd gotten older and taken his first psychology courses at Oxford that he'd really understood that it could be false. That it was possible for him to have created the whole fantasy out of some detail—some bright but mundane light shining outside of the house, some flicker of red from the television, some noise he didn't recognize. He could have imagined the shaking of the house. He could have imagined anything or everything. That his mind might've been protecting him from the guilt that came with knowing he'd let his sister be kidnapped while he was in the room, frozen, with a gun in his hands. Why didn't I fight? Because she was taken by little green men, that's why. A gun won't stop little green men.

This belief had frustrated his father. Bill Mulder wanted the kidnapper caught, and here his son was inventing stories that would ensure no one ever found the bastard. Fox was supposed to be smart. Fox was supposed to have a photographic memory and instead all he had were stories about aliens and bright flashing lights.

His silence must have drawn Scully's stare, because she'd paused and studied his face for a few seconds. "Is something wrong?" she'd asked as she turned her eyes back to the road.

That, and its close cousins _Are you okay_ and _Are you alright,_ were questions he was getting tired of hearing. He didn't bother to respond. Instead he told her it was ridiculous and asked where she came in. "I guess you were their resident alien expert?"

At this, Scully had actually laughed. She told him of how he had rediscovered, and gotten himself assigned to, the X-Files by '91. Two years later, as a green young agent with degrees in medicine and physics, she'd been assigned to him to debunk his work and to help justify his expense reports. In some way or another, she'd said, they'd been together ever since...and they had uncovered a lot.

It was this conspiracy that she wanted to talk about. She said that it reached so high up in the government that there were men who acted with total impunity from the law, and that his late night visitor was one of those men. She said it was all about UFOs and aliens and secret tests, and that the two of them had followed countless leads and been kicked out of more than one military base in their search for the truth. There were experiments to make hybrids and clones and a vaccine to some alien virus. She said the conspiracy involved Samantha, and that some of it may have even been staged to make him believe.

He'd asked her who the hell would want to do that.

First she said that she didn't know. Then she told him that his father was involved in the conspiracy, and—her voice had gone soft, and she'd hesitated—that he may have been involved in her disappearance as well. That he might have been forced to make a choice.

That made him sit up straight. "What kind of a choice?" he'd demanded.

She said it wasn't really her place to tell him, and that it probably didn't pertain to the investigation. Then she'd paused. "This could hurt you, Mulder."

He'd yelled at her and she told him. His father had given Samantha away to his colleagues because he'd disagreed with them and they'd demanded a sacrifice. Maybe she had been tested on so that she would survive when the aliens took over the earth. Maybe not. Maybe it had been something else entirely.

Mulder was past being angry, past even the ability to be angry. If his father had given Samantha away, he'd have known where she was. There would have been no need for a police investigation, no need for an eight-hour interrogation of his twelve-year-old son. There would have been no need for his father's incessant questioning about what he had seen that night, for the years upon years he'd told Fox in so many words that he was to blame. And if—it was ridiculous, stupid, to even think this—if aliens really were involved, then why had his father been so angry when Fox had insisted that Samantha was abducted? Shouldn't he have been glad that his son knew the truth?

A new headache was beginning to throb behind his eyes. Mulder shut them, leaning his head back against the seat. This was too much. Between yesterday's events and his breakdown last night and his less-than-successful run this morning and now this, it was just too much. He felt like he was being torn apart, pulled in too many directions by too many different people who all, somehow, knew how to say exactly what he least wanted to hear. I can tell you about your sister. Like kids, Mulder? New case. Talk to your father. Might be a conspiracy. It's aliens and it turns out he knew all along. His head throbbed and his hand ached and he just couldn't take any of this bullshit anymore.

That was about when Scully suggested they stop.

They pulled into the little rest station next to a rusty pickup truck. As soon as the car rumbled to a stop Mulder shoved his door open with his left arm and stood up, only to lean against the car as a rush of dizziness overtook him.

Scully was watching him. "Are you okay?"

Was she kidding? He nodded, feeling sick. He'd have walked past her, but he didn't want to move, except maybe to collapse into bed somewhere. He was afraid of what his body would do if he moved.

"I know…" Scully began. "Mulder, I know that was a lot for you to take in. It must have been."

No shit, Scully.

"Mulder, are you going to say anything to me at all?"

"Yeah," Mulder grunted, pushing himself up off the car. What the hell. "Let's go in."

It was Scully's turn to nod silently. Mulder let her lead the way, mostly so she wouldn't see how unsteady he was on his feet. He felt like crap, and knew he would have even if Scully hadn't insisted on rewriting his life story. The ache in his wrist had been sharp and insistent since he'd come in that morning, and showed no signs of abating. It was time for more Tylenol. He wished he had something stronger. He should have accepted the heavy meds from the hospital. Grimacing, he pulled the blister pack of Tylenol out of his coat pocket. There were two left in there. He'd popped four of them after he'd gotten home.

Scully glanced back as he crinkled the tablets out of their bubbles and swallowed them dry. He wondered if she'd do the math and realize that he'd finished the pack way too quickly. Mother hen that she was, he hoped not. He felt like an addict, trying to hide the evidence of his latest hit. He hated this. He hated this and he hated drugs and he wished the Tylenol would just kick in already.

Scully fell back so that they were in stride as they entered the rest stop. Everything was dirty and brown and smelled like recycled air and sewage. The biggest signs in the place directed travelers to men's and women's restrooms. There was a sad little arcade in one corner as well as a convenience store and a restaurant that had definitely seen better days. The lone waitress wiping tables glanced up as they entered, but Mulder looked away. No way was he inviting Scully to think he wanted to sit down there.

"Go on, Scully," he said when she glanced questioningly at him. "I'll wait here."

Her questioning look turned into something else entirely as her eyes narrowed, but then he watched the red hair bob away into the doorway under the sign that said WOMEN. He winced and retreated to a grimy-looking wall, leaning against it and closing his eyes. The fluorescent lights overhead were aggravating his headache.

He sighed slowly, exhaustion creeping over him. He just wanted to sleep, or go numb, or throw up, or all three. The Tylenol wasn't even taking the edge off the pain. Damn. His queasiness grew as he pondered it and a few seconds later he was striding as quickly as he could toward the men's bathroom. Shit.

He barged into a stall, crouched to his knees, and retched violently into the toilet for too long. When he finished he was on his knees, sweaty and trembling and breathing hard. His stomach hurt with a deep, rolling ache, and he was utterly drained. His arm throbbed intensely in its splint and his head pounded. At least the floor was clean.

He finally managed to push himself up, flushed, and staggered over to the row of sinks and mirrors. He drank directly from the tap and spit into the sink, trying to clean out his mouth, and wished he hadn't left his toothbrush and toothpaste packed away in the car. The water tasted like the rest stop smelled. He splashed some of it over his face anyway and groped for a paper towel, then patted his face dry and stared at his reflection.

He looked cadaverous. He hadn't been this thin since he was a kid and the skeletal look didn't suit him. Or maybe it was the deep circles beneath his eyes, dark as bruises against his pale skin. His nose was prominent, jutting, the centerpiece of a hollowed-out face. He'd never liked it much anyway. He ran the fingers of his left hand slowly over his jaw. He'd shaved this morning, and now he could clearly see the brown-and-yellowing bruise on his cheek.

Nevada's UNSUB last week had jammed the business end of a baseball bat into his cheekbone during a chase, knocking him to the ground, and then Mulder had let him get away. The local hospital said he'd be fine but should probably take it easy for the next couple of days. Instead he'd spent that week choking down aspirin, since that was all the gas station next to the hotel carried.

He smirked at his reflection just to see it move and ran a hand uselessly through his hair. Scully would be waiting outside by now, ready to doctor him at any sign of weakness, maybe even to get him called back to D.C. He had to compose himself before going out there. For all he appreciated her sympathy but it would just get in the way. He hadn't had a Scully in the Nevada case and that had turned out just fine.

Right, Mulder thought, staring at his reflection. Just fine.

Someone knocked at the bathroom door.

"It's open," Mulder called out wearily. Some people. This was obviously a very public bathroom, with about ten urinals in a line and a whole row of stalls. The front door probably didn't even lock. Had he been in less pain he might have thought up something more bitingly sarcastic. Right now he just couldn't summon the energy.

"Are you alright, Mulder?"

Of course. He'd waited too long and she'd noticed. He didn't try to keep the sigh out of his voice. "This is the men's room, Scully." The words came out unexpectedly hoarse.

"And I'm still on the other side of the door," Scully called back. "Do you need any help?"

What was he, five? "I'm fine," he snapped, letting go of his death grip on the side of the sink. His head was still swimming but he made it to the door and pushed it open violently, realizing a second later he'd probably come close to clipping Scully with it. Angry as he was, he didn't want to have to explain to Bill how he'd managed to concuss his partner at a truck stop in Maryland. Luckily, she'd moved back, and was watching with arms folded. He didn't give her the chance to comment.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, and thrust something into his good hand. A paper bag. "I got you some juice. See if you can keep it down."

So she did know. He didn't reply and they walked out of the rest stop. He shivered in the parking lot until Scully opened the car, and they both got in. Scully seemed on the verge of saying something that began with "Mulder—" but was interrupted by the shrilling of Mulder's cell phone. Thank God. He fished it out of his bag with some difficulty and picked it up.

"Mulder," he said.

"They found two more bodies. A sixty-year-old man and a college student." It was Patterson.

Damn. He was slipping. He felt the familiar guilt rush over him like a cold wave. He should have known, should have seen something in the file that would have clued him in on this. Usually he did. "Where? How old?"

"West Virginia, middle of nowhere. Little town called Ansted. Based on preliminary findings the local PD thinks these are the earliest. Where are you?"

Mulder gave Patterson the name of the nearest town. Patterson promised to fax the location of the crime scene, as well as driving directions, to the nearest FBI field office. He said he wanted Mulder to get up there before the locals trampled it too badly.

"Sure," Mulder said.

"Tell Dr. Scully."

"I will."

"Do you have a working profile yet?" Patterson asked after a short pause during which Mulder had expected him to cut the connection.

"No," he admitted.

"Does Scully?"

"I don't think so," he said.

There was a little click as Patterson hung up. Mulder repeated their conversation to Scully in monotone, aware that he had to, but not interested in her response. They'd see the West Virginia scene first. He wanted to visit the crime scenes in the order they'd been chosen, and if Scully didn't like that, that was her problem. They hadn't lost that much time driving north.

He shuffled through his briefcase for the case files he'd started on earlier. He had skimmed them all yesterday, but now he had to read them again more deeply and take notes that he would probably never look at again—no need when he could recall them in his mind's eye like that. It helped him to write them, though, to let his hand do the easy work while his mind searched for the patterns behind the behaviors or the connection between the victims or whatever else it needed to find. For this case, that was pretty much everything.

The guilty sensation of helplessness in the face of an seemingly impossible task crashed down on him, and he put his head in his hand again. Fuck. He'd almost managed to forget that he had nothing. Nothing. At this point, he always had at least impressions or a general idea of what to start. He always got some idea of where to start, some sense of things, within a few minutes of reading a case file. That was _always_ how he worked.

He was supposed to be Spooky Mulder. Patterson's boy genius.

He straightened up and rested his head against the seat back. It felt heavy, too heavy for his neck. His whole body was leaden. His eyes slid shut and he realized a second later he was falling asleep. Damn. He jerked himself up and opened his eyes and forced his attention on the file in his lap. The words swam before him and he couldn't concentrate, his thoughts swirling around the case Samantha his father the man at his apartment his failure Scully aliens the relentless pain his leaden limbs God he was so tired… he felt his head drop back again and this time he couldn't muster the willpower to sit up again, to keep working, to save the next victims' lives. At least they weren't all children, he thought. He was a bastard for even thinking that. He slid into sleep with a grimace, his thoughts fading to a black unsatisfied haze.

* * *

><p><em>Next up... crime scene #1! And some actual plot.<em>

_Also, big thanks to everyone who has hung in there for my very sporadic updates. This is the last chapter that will be comprised of all edited material. The next one will have a few pages of old stuff, but then I'll be picking up where I left off._

_As usual, I'd love to know what you think!_


	10. Chapter 10

_A quick update? Crazy, I know!_

_As I mentioned in the last note, this chapter marks the first appearance of new material (but I won't say just where it starts). Enjoy._

* * *

><p>March 3, 2000<p>

11:21 AM

Mulder returned to the hospital after a night of fruitless searching and collapsed into the chair by Scully's bedside. She lay still and unmoving, and the image invoked a horrible deja vu. At least when it had been cancer they'd known where to start. He looked up to the nurse who had accompanied him into the room. She nurse gazed at him sympathetically and Mulder supposed he looked as tired as he felt. The woman was a forty-something motherly blonde, and for some reason her presence made Mulder want to put his head in his hands and cry.

"Has there been any progress?" he asked softly. The only other noise in the room came from a beeping monitor behind Scully's bed.

The nurse shook her head, her pity almost tangible in the stillness. "I'm sorry," she said slowly. "She speaks every once in a while, a few words, but she hasn't awoken yet and her brain activity is still erratic. We're still waiting on a few test results, but she doesn't appear to have made any progress since yesterday morning."

"She speaks?" Mulder asked. "What does she say?" Maybe it would be a clue. Maybe she knew something.

Or maybe she was just babbling incoherently. Erratic brain activity. Whatever that meant.

"Only a few words, fragments of sentences," the nurse answered, "and sometimes names."

"Names?" Mulder demanded, standing up abruptly. "What names?"

The nurse seemed affronted, or maybe a little scared. Mulder immediately felt bad. Before he could apologize, though, the nurse said, "Yours. She also asked for her parents. She spoke to a 'Patterson' and a…La-something. I don't know. There may have been others. I haven't been in with her all night."

"How often does she speak? Enough that you hear it just checking on her? Why isn't she speaking now?" Mulder was aware that he was staring intensely at the nurse, and that it might have been unnerving. He didn't care. Names from Mulder's past didn't make sense, and what didn't make sense was almost always important. He moved in closer to her. "What else did she say?"

"She spoke at about five this morning. The nurse who came in before me said that she'd asked for her parents around 2 AM." She smiled sweetly then, like an old nun. "Of course, you're welcome to wait with her. I'd say she's likely to talk again."

Mulder swallowed his frustration as best he could and nodded, stepping back slightly. The nurse was doing the best she could. He had to remember that. It wasn't her fault he'd missed the only possible clue to her condition because he was busy searching for people and information that probably didn't exist. "Thank you," he managed. The nurse smiled and left them alone.

He sat heavily in one of the plastic chairs by Scully's bedside. She looked so small, so frail, so pale. She didn't move except to breathe. Her eyes were closed. Patterson and a La-something. Lamana. Why would she be talking about Patterson and Lamana? It didn't make sense no matter how he turned it over in his mind.

"Oh, Scully," he murmured. The hand closest to him on the bedspread was limp but he picked it up and held it between his anyway. She didn't stir. He remembered holding a vigil over her bedside five years ago, and speaking to her as if she could hear him, as if anything he said could make a difference. He'd believed that she wasn't ready to go. He still believed it. He had no choice but to believe that. Her hand was small and soft, and warm in his grasp. He had spent too many days and nights by her bedside. It didn't get easier. The steady beeping of the medical equipment was insistent and he felt the need to break the silence with something more. The mystery could wait. Right now it was just him and her.

"Scully," he said after a few moments had passed, "I don't know where you are right now or how you got there. But Scully—" he meant to tell her that he believed she didn't want to be there, in hopes that the same magic would work this time, that she would come out of this as fiery and alive as before, "I need you. I love you, and I can't do this without you. Scully, please. Come back."

He stopped then, the plaintive sound of his own words finally reaching his brain. He was the most selfish man in the world. What had ever happened to "I believe you want to come back"? Once he'd wanted her to be alive and awake for her own sake. Now all he could think about was how he would crumble without her. Maybe he'd never said it in so many words, but the truth was staring him right in the face. He wanted her, he needed her, he loved her.

"Scully," he said again, voice catching, and squeezed her hand as if somehow that would let her know he was waiting. "Scully, I love you. Come back to me, Scully. Come back."

Scully didn't respond, but his cell phone rang. He started, then swore, absurdly angry for a moment that anyone would dare to intrude on such a private moment. But of course whoever was on the other end didn't have a clue, and he set Scully's hand down on her blanket and fished the phone out of his pocket. Maybe it was the Lone Gunmen with some answers.

"Mulder," he answered.

It wasn't the Lone Gunmen. "How's she doing?" Skinner asked.

Mulder sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No change."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Skinner said. Though the gruffness didn't leave his voice, he sounded sorry. He'd been in to visit earlier in the morning, when Mulder had been gone.

"So am I," Mulder said. "But that's not why you called."

"No," Skinner admitted. "Another body turned up, matches the description of the other four. Grandson found him, looks like he's been dead a few days."

Impossible to believe it had been only two days ago that Scully had autopsied four bodies, all dead in their small town homes with no apparent cause. And yet... "Where?" he asked.

Skinner paused, reading something. "West Virginia," he said.

* * *

><p>1989<p>

11:25 AM

Scully glanced over at Mulder again, then back at the road. He was asleep, amazing considering he'd downed a large coffee, black, less than four hours ago. He was still sitting almost straight up, leaning against the backrest without falling to either side. A veritable balancing act. His face looked serious, set. His legs were spread as far as the space in the little rental car would allow and his arms rested at his sides. Scully wondered briefly why he wasn't wearing his sling, if he planned to, and where he might have left it if he didn't. The file and notepad in his lap each remained precariously perched across one thin thigh, where they'd been since he'd dozed off two hours ago. She was just waiting for him to shift and send the contents of the folder spilling out over the rental car floor. His seatbelt dangled unused at his right.

She thought, as she glanced down at the directions Patterson had faxed them, that Mulder must have really needed the sleep. He'd turned his head a little and grunted as she stopped the car outside of the FBI field office, opened her door, and climbed out. That was it. He'd still been asleep when she got back fifteen minutes later, and hadn't even stirred as she'd started driving again.

Maybe she'd told him too much. Certainly, he needed to know about the conspiracy and his father's involvement…but she had laid out a story that would be difficult for any emotionally healthy person to process. And Mulder could hardly claim to be that.

Well, she thought, setting her jaw and staring out into the uneventful highway, what's done is done. There was no use in torturing herself over it now, regretting too much or feeling guilty. That was Mulder's usual path, and she'd seen the consequences. Now, she just had to make sure that Mulder got through it all in one piece.

Her mind set, she yawned, surprising herself. Her night of too little sleep was catching up with her too, though of course she would never let on to Mulder that that was the case. More coffee might be in order before long, though. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and wished turning the radio on wouldn't likely wake up her partner. They were still near to four hours out from Ansted, which a cursory glance at the map told her was about as middle-of-nowhere a town as a town could be. Still, there was something strangely familiar about it, and the familiarity niggled at her mind as she stared out across the highway, largely empty at this time of day save for tractor trailers and the occasional passenger car or pickup truck. Did she remember this case, perhaps some aspect of it that might be jogged in her memory as they drew nearer to the little town? Or was it something else? Had she read about this case, too, so many years ago? She found herself chewing on her lip as she tried to strain her memory, but it was almost as if the association was a fuzzy strand from another life. But her own? Or someone else's? Maybe she was finally losing her mind.

She shook her head slightly at the futility of it and wished Mulder would wake up. She had no illusions at this point that he could help her, really, but with nothing to watch outside the window but trees and rolling hills that all looked suspiciously similar, she couldn't help but want the company.

Mulder slept on.

The town of Ansted was nestled in mountains in the dense trees and mountains of the Hawk's Nest State Park. It was hardly the most remote location Scully had ever traveled to with Mulder, but as the highway narrowed to wind up and around the mountains in a series of twists and hairpin turns, rutted thoroughly with potholes, she couldn't help but muse that maybe they should have brought survival gear in addition to the suits in their overnight bags. Just a little trip into the forest, Scully. Whatever was going on, someone had apparently made an effort to do it out of anyone's way. Which, Scully supposed as she slammed the brakes in time to guide the car around yet another narrow turn, was probably important…so of course Mulder had probably thought of it already.

Unfortunately, though his file folder and legal pad had long since slipped from his knees to rest slackly between his shins and the passenger door, Mulder remained dead to the world. He'd murmured a few times in his sleep, tossed a little, and even cried out when the car had rumbled over a pothole and jarred his wrist, but otherwise the movement had done nothing to jolt him from his slumber. His head lolled against the passenger window and Scully remembered their first case together, and her long-ago disbelief that a man who seemed to have so much boundless energy could fall asleep on a crowded plane, of all places. She wanted to believe now that his willingness to let her drive was a sign of some kind of trust, of some sense that she did belong by his side, but she had a feeling the truth was considerably more pedestrian. Mulder had to be exhausted.

It was past three in the afternoon by the time she pulled up to Ansted's police department, which occupied one of the five buildings that seemed to comprise the main street. Mindful of his violent awakening the night before, Scully reached out and touched Mulder's sleeve gently. His arm was thin beneath the suit jacket, the muscles wiry, and she couldn't help but sigh slightly as she let go of his arm. This wasn't her Mulder. He shifted at her touch but didn't wake.

"Mulder," she tried instead.

He came awake with a start, and glared at her uncomprehendingly for a long second before reaching up to scrub at his face with his good hand. "We're here?" he asked sleepily, with a glance around that ended at the case file resting against his leg on the car floor. His face hardened. "Come on. Patterson said they'd be waiting for us."

"Do you need a moment?" Scully asked.

The deadpan stare he returned was answer enough. "Let's go," he said.

Scully nodded and shoved her door open.

Main Street was a little more than two blocks long, fading into residential streets on either side of the row of buildings that housed the police department. Ringed on all sides by verdant mountains, it had the air of a town untouched by development or time. Scully waited as Mulder stood laboriously, and pretended not to notice the way he wavered slightly or clung to the car door for a few seconds before slamming it shut. His face was pinched with effort and Scully resisted the urge to offer him help, Tylenol, comfort, anything. She would keep playing along, for now.

They were met inside by one of the Ansted Police Department's two fulltime officers, a bearlike man with a thick black moustache and a belly that was just beginning to sag over the belt of his trousers.

He smiled as they entered. "Mulder and Scully?" he asked genially.

"That's us," Mulder said, flashing his badge, and Scully was surprised to see him return the smile. In fact, she wasn't entirely sure she'd seen him smile yet. Had she not known him so well, she would have suspected a miraculous recovery—but this was Mulder, and hiding his weakness was an instinct that came as naturally to him as breathing did to most other people. She supposed it was something, at least, that he wasn't keeping up the façade with her. Not that she'd given him much of a chance to.

"Officer Dan Grimes, call me Dan," he said, apparently noticing the cast on Mulder's wrist but reaching out to shake Scully's hand before turning back to Mulder. "So this is a serial case, is it?"

"That's what it looks like," Mulder allowed.

"Oddest thing," Officer Grimes mused. "Two folks reported missing, never spent a lick of time together, then they show up dead in the middle of the woods. Weren't camping or anything. Glad it's you two have to make sense of it, not me."

Scully didn't miss the flicker of impatience that crossed Mulder's face, though whether it was at the other man's manner or at the prospect of making sense of the case Scully couldn't have said. "Have your people examined the scene yet?" he asked.

Grimes laughed. "My people? It's just me and Rob, here." He nodded to the empty desk on the other side of the room. "We removed the bodies and cordoned off the scene but otherwise it's all yours." Mulder nodded in apparent approval. "I can take you out there if you'd like."

"We'd appreciate that," Scully said.

Grimes led them out to the squad car, a dusty Crown Vic with ANSTED POLICE emblazoned on the side. Scully took the passenger seat. Tinny country music began playing at a low volume from the FM radio as soon as Grimes started the ignition, and he let it on. As Grimes pulled onto the street, Mulder positioned himself in the middle of the back seat and leaned forward to speak through the grate. The position was so familiar that Scully couldn't help but glance back, almost expecting to see the eager face of _her_ partner, full of ideas about the paranormal angle of their latest case. But if anything, the tightness of pain and exhaustion had returned to this Mulder's thin face, even more so than when he had stepped out of her car a few minutes before.

"Where are the bodies?" Mulder asked.

"Local morgue," Grimes responded, glancing back at him in the rearview mirror. "We left those for your people too."

"I'd like to examine them myself," Scully said. She still had a medical degree, at the very least, and this was one area she could be of help to Mulder.

"I'll have 'em ready," Grimes shrugged. Then his eyes narrowed. "So you two are agents, or profilers, or doctors, or what?"

Scully opened her mouth, trying to formulate an answer that didn't sound insane.

"We're just here to solve this case," Mulder said, and Scully nodded, feeling strangely satisfied. Grimes drove on.

* * *

><p>4:17 PM<p>

The roads leading to the crime scene were narrow, steep, and winding, and often walled on one side by mountain, the other side a sheer drop. There was little of interest forking off of any of them, save a campground or two—though Grimes claimed neither had been camping, or particularly interested in doing so—a handful of country restaurants, and an attraction tantalizingly named the Mystery Hole. According to Grimes, the Ansted police rarely came out this far, as the usual complaints—drunks, disorderly conduct, and dogs—tended to be concentrated where there were people, and they were typically happy enough to leave the speeding tickets to the state and park police. The bodies had been found in relatively good condition the night before.

Mulder scanned the steep landscapes with an ease born of practice, picking out half a dozen good dumping spots with each turn the car made. Any of those spots, this far out of Ansted were certainly isolated enough to make sense as a dumping site for any sort of offender who didn't driving a few miles with bodies in the trunk. Even the radio reception faltered as they neared the site, crackling so badly that Grimes turned off his Kenny Rogers with a sigh.

As they pulled over to the shoulder beside a nondescript clearing surrounded by yellow police tape, Mulder felt whatever hopes he'd harbored of making sense of the action slip away. Police markers showed that the bodies had occupied what was roughly the center of the clearing, and had been laid out next to each other in plain view of the road.

"Bodies were there, see," Grimes gestured to the markers as they all got out of the car. "Photos are getting developed as we speak, so you can see how they looked when we found 'em."

"Who found them?" Scully asked. Mulder was already walking toward the tape, trying to vizualize the scene as it would have appeared to the UNSUB, in the dark or with a flashlight...or had he come here an earlier day to scope it out? His head was pounding in time to his wrist but somehow, out here, it receded to the background, along with the early March chill and the way the world lurched a little when he moved too fast.

"Rob Taylor," Grimes answered somewhere behind him. "Other officer in the department. Got a call someone was setting off fireworks or something, drove out here to tell 'em to knock it off, found this instead."

"Fireworks?" Scully asked.

Grimes' answer faded to the background as well. Mulder _was_ the UNSUB, looking for a place to lay the bodies of twenty-year-old Regina Albertson and, home for spring break from WVU, and Fred Dingman, a sixty-year-old man who'd been working at a nearby grocery ever since his pacemaker had disqualified him from service in the armed forces...and with that his trance broke. It was hard to imagine who would kill either of those people in cold blood, let alone murder them together with no apparent instrument or motive, then dump the bodies in plain sight on a road ill-traveled enough to make an intentional display impractical. If it hadn't been for a couple of hicks celebrating the fourth of July early, it was more than likely that the scene would have been disturbed by animals, the bodies moved or eaten.

And that wasn't even taking into account the fact that someone, or multiple someones, had done this in multiple towns in multiple states, all in the space of a few weeks. There was always the possibility of related suicides, but so far no one had turned up any connection between the cases and it was hard to fathom what cult such a diverse group of people could have belonged to. Also hard to kill yourself without leaving any evidence of how. All the information he had on this was a tangled mess, and he was no closer to unraveling it enough to save whoever the next victims were going be than he was to finding Samantha or going to the moon or finally getting a night's sleep.

His head throbbed and he closed his eyes against the deluge of thoughts, the pain, the frustration and all the rest. The blood roared in his ears and he supposed this would be a bad time to pass out. He found it hard to care. The scene had been his last hope for getting the handle he so desperately needed on this case, the hook, whatever the hell it was that always guided his next move. But if he couldn't find anything here...

There was a touch as his elbow, and he opened his eyes, immediately squinting against the light and the extra stab of pain that accompanied it.

"Mulder," Scully said.

He just looked at her, but the expected _Are you okay_ or otherwise frustrating inquiry into his health—which was the least of his worries now—didn't come.

"Do you see the tree line?" Scully asked.

Not exactly what he'd been expecting. He followed her gaze upward to where the tallest pines met the pale sky. "What about it?"

"The trees are singed," Scully said gravely, as though this were the most important thing she could have noticed. Mulder shook his head, not following. He wondered if she'd cracked, or if this new insanity was just more of the same nonsense she'd spewed earlier. Only now she was staring at him intently, eyes wide and urgent. "Mulder, does that not mean anything to you?"

He couldn't imagine where she was going with this. "Lightning?" he guessed.

The sound Scully made was somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and startled him enough that he drew back. He saw Grimes giving them a quizzical look from where he stood leaning against the car. "Sorry," Scully said. "It's just...if you knew...if you knew what I said to you the first time you..." Then she seemed to catch herself, took a deep, bracing breath, met his eyes and said, "Fireworks. Lights in the sky. Singed treetops. Radio interference. Bodies showing up in strange places for no reason." She paused, and swallowed, her eyes shining. "Mulder, _I know what this is_."


	11. Chapter 11

"Aliens," Mulder said, his voice hard, flat, and skeptical above all else. "You think this is aliens."

Scully nodded slightly. "The signs are all there, Mulder," she said cautiously. He hadn't blown up at her yet, but his expression hadn't softened either. He was staring at her with his eyes narrowed, as though he thought maybe this was a joke or she was insane after all. It wasn't encouraging.

After a long moment, Mulder shook his head. "I told you, Scully, what I believed after my sister was taken. I did my research. I remember all the signs." Mulder's tone remained less than friendly and Scully crossed her arms. Maybe telling him now hadn't been such a good idea after all. Still, she was ready to defend her case if need be. Mulder went on, his voice sharp but low enough that Grimes probably couldn't hear, though the officer was peering at them with interest from where he stood leaning against his patrol car. "Doesn't mean any of it was true then and it sure as hell doesn't mean it's true now. What is true is that people are getting killed I have a profile to write before another pair of bodies show up, so I don't have the time for this any more than I have the time for conspiracies or time travel or the X-files."

"You don't think this might be important?" Scully asked, struggling to keep her own temper in check. Somehow her hands had found their way to her hips as Mulder spoke, and she forced them down. She reminded herself that snapping at Mulder wouldn't do anyone any good, and responded in as even a tone as she could muster. This mattered too much to let her own feelings get in the way. A chill wind whipped around them as she replied. "If it is what I think it is, you aren't going to find anything," she said. "And there will be no helping these people."

Mulder only snorted. "See, I forgot how much easier it is to catch the bad guys when they can hop in their saucers and fly away. You're right. This helps a bunch. Thanks, Dana."

"Your source," Scully said, her own tone dangerous as frustration won out over her desire to keep from antagonizing her partner. Mulder had begun to turn away to survey the scene once more, but he pivoted back to her, his lips pressed tightly together, not bothering to hide his impatience or the little wobble at the end of his turn. "The man who came to visit you last night," Scully said. She took a deep breath and reminded herself to sound calm, for this might be her last chance to get her partner's attention, at least until they came across new evidence. "He works for the government. He must know what's going on."

Mulder shook his head, his dark eyes unreadable. "He said I wouldn't find anything and told me to talk to my father." He pulled his overcoat closer around his skinny frame and crossed his arms, and Scully wondered whether he was responding more to the wind or to the change in subject. Both seemed likely. "I don't see what he could do."

Scully took a deep breath, though it took nearly all her willpower to not let it out in a dramatic sigh. This was getting ridiculous, and she wondered if she'd seemed like this to him when they'd played this game with the roles reversed, her refusing to entertain whole swaths of possibility no matter how obvious they seemed. Still, she kept her tone carefully neutral, for she knew that to Mulder her words would be anything but. "Maybe you should talk to your father."

She could see a muscle in Mulder's jaw twitch before he spoke. "I don't talk to him," he snapped. "Now will you leave me alone? We don't have all day here."

This time Scully did sigh, closing her eyes for a brief moment. She had once felt she deserved a medal for dealing with her own Mulder's idiosyncrasies on a daily basis, but this Mulder...it was amazing he'd lasted in the Bureau as long as he had, seeing as that meant each of his partners had actually refrained from killing him at some point or other. "Mulder, you can't ignore this," Scully insisted. "All of this can't be a coincidence. This case... Mulder, these bodies might have been put here by aliens. Or they might have been put here by our own government. You can't ignore those possibilities."

"Can't I?" Mulder said. That strained snarl-like grin she'd seen the day before was plastered on his face again, and she could see his good hand curled into a fist in the crook of his elbow. "Look, Scully, if you want to spend your time searching this crime scene for Rigellian slime, you can go right ahead. I have a case to solve. It's my job to find the people responsible for this and I'm never going to do that if I don't finish writing this profile." His eyes were wide and not for the first time, Scully could sense the strain behind them, the belief that he really was all that stood between the UNSUB and the next victims. Never mind that there would be an "official" team of FBI criminalists following them to the scene or that a dozen agents had been put on this case in DC. Patterson had charged Mulder with finding the perpetrators- the human perpetrators - and any other outcome, both in Patterson's eyes and Mulder's, would be a failure. It was no wonder he wouldn't listen to her, when he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Still, she couldn't help but offer a parting thought as he began to glance around the scene again, his attention clearly fading from her. "But Mulder," she said, biting her lip, "what if this is why I'm here? What if it's all connected somehow?"

He looked her up and down, and then a sharp humorless laugh escaped him. "I don't know why you're here, Scully, but it can't be for this."

Scully stood blinking as he turned away and studied a nearby tree trunk a little too intently, for the moment able only to wonder if she really had sounded so obstinate, back in the days before the evidence that there was something else out there had grown so overwhelming that even she had been unable to deny it. She had told Mulder so many times that his theories were impossible, that searching for the paranormal was simply a waste of time. Had he felt the way she did now, powerless in the face of enduring disbelief? She tried to imagine what Mulder, her Mulder, would have done in this situation. He'd spent a career facing down worse skeptics than her, after all. Odd that she'd never really understood how hard it must have been. Even when she had found herself trying to convince her superiors, or local police departments, or any number of others of the existence of these conspiracies, she had done so with the knowledge that Mulder was standing with her. That she was not alone in her beliefs. Now, though...now she had to walk the path that he had, insisting on what sounded to others like wild fantasies and unbelievable stories. But walk it she would. At least, she supposed, Spooky was a better nickname than Ice Queen.

Mulder had busied himself near where the bodies had lain, crouching down to examine something in the soil beside two of the police markers. He'd grabbed a sketchbook from the evidence kit in the patrol car and placed it on the hard ground beside the markers, and he bent over it intermittently to scribble notes with his left hand. Scully walked around him, scanning the ground.

It was strange, how absurd she'd always thought it when Mulder insisted on driving around with a Geiger counter in the trunk. And stranger yet how much she'd give now to have one. There had to be some evidence of alien—or government, or both—interference.

Certain as she was, though, her search of the scene and nearby woods hadn't revealed any. There was no sand to have been congealed into glass, nor any other evidence of extreme heat aside from the singed pines above their heads. No black oil, no apparitions or mysterious barriers, no crops or trees or cows out of place. No physical evidence that anything out of the ordinary, except possibly a rogue lightning strike, had happened in the remote West Virginia mountains a few nights before.

Mulder had spent most of the time examining the ground, looking through bushes and under fallen logs and combing the half-frozen loam for evidence, jotting notes on his pad as he went. He'd made a few measurements and bagged a few samples of leaf and soil. The rest of the time he'd spent staring at the scene from different angles, only to close his eyes for a few moments, open them, and walk somewhere else to repeat the process. Maybe stop to look under a rock and bag another piece of potential evidence, or to maneuver the sketchbook against something so he could add another line or write another word. As the temperature dropped, Officer Grimes had moved inside his car and waited patiently. Scully thought she could see him reading a cheap paperback through the windows and couldn't help a pang of jealousy. Which was possibly a pang of hunger. They'd skipped lunch in hurrying out to the scene and the less she found, the more she looked forward to sitting down to dinner in a nice, _warm_ restaurant.

It was starting to get dark, their breath misting in the cold air, when Mulder stood abruptly and walked over to her. His cheeks were red from the wind and the sketchbook dangled from his good hand. "I've seen enough," he said.

Scully didn't bother to be surprised by his sudden declaration. "Find anything?" she asked, rubbing her cold hands together and nodding toward the small collection of bagged evidence Mulder had been setting by the road.

His look at her was guarded, still in Spooky mode and no doubt distrustful of her overly innocent tone. But a second later, his shoulders sagged, the veneer of the untouchable profiler fading as the ever-present exhaustion showed though. "No," he admitted, his voice rough.

Scully bowed her head in acknowledgment of his perceived failure, which he would no doubt spend the rest of the night castigating himself for unless she did something about it. She met his eyes and let a little smile play on her face. "Come on, Mulder," she said, taking his good arm at the elbow. "Enough. I'll take you to dinner."

His eyes closed, briefly, at _enough_ but for once he didn't argue. Considering how much her own stomach was rumbling, Scully supposed he had to be hungry too. After all she was fairly sure all Mulder had consumed since his stint at the hospital had been a bowl of canned chicken soup a few resentful sips of orange juice. A moment later Mulder crouched down to pick up his bagged evidence, balancing it on the wide side of the sketchbook, then followed her to the squad car.

Still, he wasn't about to let her get the last word. He caught her eye as they approached their respective car doors. "It can't be aliens," he said, opened his car door and swung himself inside. Scully sighed as she followed him, the relatively warm interior of the car greeting her. Some things never changed.

Officer Grimes greeted them affably as they settled into their seats, bookmarking an old spy novel and sliding it into the tray between the front seats. "Any luck?" he asked after a moment. "You've been out there a while."

Scully glanced at her watch reflexively, though the digital clock in the patrol car quite visibly read that it was 5:57. Then she looked down again, because her watch, which in her rush to get to Mulder that morning she'd checked plenty of times against the clocks in her apartment and his, read 6:06.

The image of a Mulder slightly older than this one, circling a scene confidently with stopwatch in hand as she offered sensible rebuttals to each claim he'd made, sprung unbidden into her mind. _Yeah, it can play tricks on you, _he'd said, showing her the difference._ But not like this_.

"Nine minutes," she murmured.

"Huh?" Grimes asked. She could feel Mulder's eyes on her as well.

"Nothing," she said after a moment, shaking her head. Surely the information would be of use later, but now, with Grimes in the car and doubtlessly Mulder still stinging from his lack of results, was not the time. She forced a bright smile instead. She had other important questions, after all. "So tell me, Dan," she regarded the officer, "do you know of any good restaurants in the area?"

* * *

><p>They stopped to check into their hotel, a cheap but pleasantly rustic establishment about ten minutes out from the center of Ansted.<p>

"We don't get many visitors this time of year," the concierge told them as she plucked a pair of keys from a rack on the far wall. She looked to be in her late fifties or sixties, a little heavy, and had thick glasses and a thicker Appalachian accent. "Mainly folks passing through on 77, figure they may's well stop at the Mystery Hole while they're near." She peered up at them, taking in their briefcases and by now rumpled suits. "What brings you folks out here?"

"Business," Scully said, deciding against a more descriptive answer. We're here to examine some dead bodies and the ground they were found on may have been accurate, but she could see no reason to burden the old woman with the details. In any case, she was starving, and was ready to put the case behind them for a few hours.

Mulder, of course, had no such compunctions. "We're investigating the deaths of Regina Albertson and and Fred Dingman," he said, lounging against the counter with a forced smile. Scully resisted the urge to roll her eyes at her partner's attempt at charm. His natural good looks shone through despite his haggard gauntness, but the woman was clearly old enough to be his mother. But then, Scully supposed mournfully, she should have known that Mulder would somehow manage to put something else between them and dinner.

Unsurprisingly, the concierge reacted somewhat differently to Mulder's grin, her lips parting in a return smile that revealed quite a few missing teeth. "Strangest thing I ever heard of," the woman told Mulder, who nodded for her to go on. "Fred's been a bit off for a time, I suppose. Known each other since we was young, you know. Went to the school just over the ridge."

Mulder cast a meaningful glance at Scully before focusing his attention on the woman once more. "A bit off how?" he asked.

"Oh, you know," she waved a hand in a vague gesture, their keys apparently forgotten. "Fred's been bagging groceries and sweeping the floors up at the Go Mart for nigh on forty years now."

"What's so unusual about that?" Scully asked, giving Mulder a meaningful look of her own. Though in this case, the meaning was _let's hurry up Mulder, I'm hungry_.

"Well," the old woman lowered her voice and leaned in toward them, though it was obvious there was no one else in the cramped lobby. "It was his habits. He'd not show up for days at a time, see, and come back full of all sorts of strange ramblings of where he'd been. Only we all knew his truck'd never left the driveway, and chalked it up to whatever kept him out of the service."

This time, Scully's glance at Mulder was urgent, wondering if the full meaning of the woman's story had sunk in for him as well. It was yet another piece in what was becoming an increasingly obvious puzzle. She'd have to find out if Regina Albertson had also been known for her strange "habits," and she'd have bet money the young woman's history would be just as full of unexplained disappearances.

Mulder, however, seemed oblivious to the subtext. Though whether that was a result of his skepticism or the fact that he seemed to have started swaying slightly on his feet, Scully wasn't sure. Her enthusiasm for new evidence dampened considerably by the concern her partner might pass out where he stood, she opened her mouth to request the room keys one more time, ready to escort Mulder to his room. But Mulder spoke first.

"Where did Fred say he went?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know," the concierge said. "Here and there. Never did talk with him much myself once we were grown."

"What about Regina?" Mulder asked quickly. He was still lounging against the desk and Scully realized with a new jolt of worry that it was perhaps more for support than for show. She rested a hand on his elbow, but his attention was fixed on the old woman.

"Regina," the woman said, and paused long enough that Scully wondered if she should just drag Mulder away without waiting for the rest of the answer. "Doc Albertson's oldest," she finished after a moment. "Can't say I've heard much of her since she went off to college. Girl was a right troublemaker in her day, though. Drinking and drugs and boyfriends, partying day and night, if you can believe all you hear."

"I'm sure you can," Scully interrupted, not bothering to curb the sarcasm in her voice. She was hungry, damn it, and what had started off as relevant information was clearly degenerating into small town gossip. "Now, could we have our keys? We both have busy nights ahead of us."

The cutting looks she received from both Mulder and the old woman were well worth having her room key in her hand and starting toward her room, suitcase in tow. She and Mulder would be across the hall from each other, their rooms at the end of the hotel's single wing.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said as soon as they were out of earshot of the concierge. "She had valuable information."

"And she'll be there when we get back," Scully reminded him. In fact, the woman had informed them that she would be on duty until midnight, and in sending them off had sounded hopeful that Mulder would return to chat. Then she sighed. She had wondered what kind of a life Mulder might have led as a profiler, and now it seemed she had her answer. He hadn't had one. "Hasn't anyone else ever tried to make you pause?" she asked after a moment, looking up at him. "You're running yourself to the ground, Mulder. You can't go on like this."

"Can't I?" he asked for the second time that evening, shifting his suitcase in his good hand as the little wheels on the bottom caught on a snag in the faded green and blue carpet. The fluorescent lights lining the hallway illuminated the bruise on his pale, hollow face, and this time it sounded to Scully like he was really asking. Can't I?

She shook her head slightly. "I don't know, Mulder."

He snorted, and she looked up at him again, surprised to see him smirking.

"What is it?" she asked.

They stopped in the space between their doors. "Well, to answer your first question," Mulder said, setting his suitcase down to maneuver his room key into the lock, "my partners have tried to slow me down. You're just the first one who doesn't take fuck off for an answer." His door swung open with a creak.

Scully raised her chin. "Should I?"

Mulder looked her up and down, then actually let his face relax into a smile. "No," he said.

Scully opened her own door, letting it swing inward with the key still in the lock. "I'll meet you in the lobby in ten minutes," she told him as he disappeared into his room, but couldn't help the smile that crept over her own face as she turned and went inside.


End file.
